Rubio, Netanyahu poke fun at "water bottle" incident

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Sen. Marco Rubio, right, grin as they hoist bottles of water to poke fun at Rubio's "water bottle-gate" incident. / R-Fla.,Office of Sen. Marco Rubio

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio met today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres during the course of a trip to the Middle East that includes stops in Israel and Jordan.

At his meeting with Netanyahu, Rubio poked fun at his recent "water bottle-gate" incident, in which he took a sorely needed but inartful swig of water during his televised response to President Obama's State of the Union address. In a photo released by Rubio's Senate office, the two men are shown, grinning broadly, holding aloft bottles of water as bystanders in the room look on.

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Marco Rubio's "water bottle-gate" moment

Apart from the self-effacing humor, according to a release from Rubio's press office, the senator and the Israeli leaders discussed the "political landscape changes in the Middle East, Israel's relations with its neighbors, peace negotiations with the Palestinians, the Iranian nuclear threat, and further strengthening the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship."

Rubio, who sits on the both the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, also made headlines on the trip by declaring that Jerusalem is "of course" the capital of Israel, according to the Associated Press.

The status of Jerusalem, which Palestinians also claim as the capital of a prospective Palestinian state, is one of many issues that have tripped up negotiators working to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The U.S. embassy in Israel is located in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.

The trip to Israel is Rubio's second: he previously visited the Jewish state in 2010 after his Senate victory. He departed for the region last Saturday and is expected to return on Friday.

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Armstrong Snubs Offer From Anti-Doping Officials

Lance Armstrong has turned down what may be his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban.

Armstrong has already admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to a career fueled by doping and deceit. But to get a break from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, all he had to do was tell his story to those who police sports doping. The deadline was today, and Armstrong now says he won't do it.

"For several reasons, Lance will not participate in USADA's efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95 percent of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction," said Tim Herman, Armstrong's longtime lawyer. "Lance is willing to cooperate fully and has been very clear: He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling."

But the "international tribunal" Armstrong is anxious to cooperate with has one major problem: It doesn't exist.

The UCI, cycling's governing body, has talked about forming a "truth and reconciliation" commission, but the World Anti-Doping Agency has resisted, citing serious concerns about the UCI and its leadership.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

Livestrong, Elizabeth Kreutz/AP Photo

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials seemed stunned by Armstrong's decision simply to walk away.

"Over the last few weeks, he [Armstrong] has led us to believe that he wanted to come in and assist USADA, but was worried of potential criminal and civil liability if he did so," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "Today, we learned from the media that Mr. Armstrong is choosing not to come in and be truthful and that he will not take the opportunity to work toward righting his wrongs in sport."

Armstrong's ongoing saga plays out amid a backdrop of serious legal problems.

Sources believe one reason Armstrong wants to testify to an international tribunal, rather than USADA, is because perjury charges don't apply if Armstrong lies to a foreign agency, they told ABC News.

While Armstrong has admitted doping, he has not given up any details, including the people and methods required to pull off one of the greatest scandals in all of sport.

Armstrong is facing several multimillion-dollar lawsuits right now, but his biggest problems may be on the horizon. As ABC News first reported, a high-level source said a criminal investigation is ongoing. And the Department of Justice also reportedly is considering joining a whistleblower lawsuit claiming the U.S. Postal Service was defrauded out of millions of dollars paid to sponsor Armstrong's cycling team.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

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French general urges EU to equip "impoverished" Mali army

BAMAKO, Mali (Reuters) - The European Union should complement a mission to train Mali's army, routed by rebels last year, by providing equipment from uniforms to vehicles and communications technology, a French general said on Wednesday.

General Francois Lecointre, appointed to head the EU training mission to Mali (EUTM) that was formally launched this week, said in Bamako equipping the "very impoverished" and disorganized Malian army was as important as training it.

Europe, along with the United States, has backed the French-led military intervention in Mali which since January 11 has driven al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents out of the main northern towns into remote mountains near Algeria's border.

European governments have ruled out sending combat troops to join French and African soldiers pursuing the Islamist rebels.

But the EU is providing a 500-strong multinational training force that will give military instruction to Malian soldiers for an initial period of 15 months at an estimated cost of 12.3 million euros ($16.45 million).

While hailing what he called the EU's "courageous, novel, historic" decision to support Mali, Lecointre told a news conference the Malian army's lack of equipment was a problem.

"I know the Malian state is poor, but the Malian army is more than poor," the French general told a news conference, adding that it urgently needed everything from uniforms and weapons to vehicles and communications equipment.

Last year, when Tuareg separatist forces swelled by weapons and fighters from the Libyan conflict swept out of the northern deserts, a demoralized and poorly-led Malian army collapsed and fled before them, abandoning arms and vehicles.

Mali's military was further shaken by a March 22 coup by junior officers who toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure, sowing division among rival army factions. Islamist radicals allied to al Qaeda later hijacked the victorious Tuareg rebellion to occupy the northern half of the country.

In a fast-charging military campaign led by Paris, French and African troops have driven the jihadists out of principal northern towns like Gao and Timbuktu, and are fighting the rebels in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.

HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUCTION

Flanked by Mali's armed forces chief, General Ibrahima Dembele, Lecointre said he was disappointed that a meeting of international donors last month pledged funds for an African military force, known as AFISMA, being deployed in Mali, but included "very few" contributions for the Malian army itself.

"The European Union needs to invest today in the equipping of the Malian army and not just in its training," the general said, adding he would make this point strongly in a report to EU member state representatives early next month.

Asked how much re-equipping the army would cost, he said it would be "much more" than the 12 million euros of EU financing for the training mission, but could not give a precise estimate.

Starting early in April, the EU mission will start instructing Malian soldiers with a plan to train four new battalions of 600-700 members each, formed from existing enlisted men and new recruits.

Lecointre said the EU training would include instruction in human rights. Demands for this increased after allegations by Malian civilians and international human rights groups that Malian soldiers were executing Tuaregs and Arabs accused of collaborating with Islamist rebels.

The European training contingent is drawn from a range of European countries, but the main contributors would be France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, EUTM officers said.

Mali's army has received foreign training before - several battalions that fled before the rebels last year were trained by the U.S. military and the leader of the March 22 coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, attended training courses in the United States.

Dembele said U.S. training failed to forge cohesion among Malian units and he hoped the EU training would achieve this.

The United States, which halted direct support for the Malian military after last year's coup, could eventually resume aid if planned national elections in July fully restore democracy to the West African country.

Washington is providing airlift, refuelling and intelligence support to the French-led military intervention in Mali. ($1 = 0.7479 euros)

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jason Webb)

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US stocks dive after Fed minutes

NEW YORK: US stocks piled up losses Wednesday after Federal Reserve minutes showed divisions over asset purchases, with some officials suggesting to wind them down before the jobs market picks up.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 108.13 points (0.77 percent) at 13,927.54.

The S&P 500-stock index fell 18.99 points (1.24 percent) to 1,511.95 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite dropped 49.18 points (1.53 percent) to 3,164.41, dragged down by heavyweight Apple, off 2.4 percent.

After opening mostly lower amid mixed housing and wholesale inflation data, the indexes hit fresh session lows after the Fed released the minutes of the January 29-30 Federal Open Market Committee meeting.

A "number" of participants said that an ongoing evaluation of the $85 billion per month asset purchases "might well lead the committee to taper or end its purchases before it judged that a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market had occurred," the minutes said.

Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight said in a research note that "if markets do not expect the Fed to stay the course, then expectations for economic growth and inflation will stay depressed and demand for safe assets (cash and government securities) will remain high."

Office Depot and OfficeMax meanwhile confirmed their merger after a premature announcement of the news.

The all-stock merger would create an $18 billion office supplies retailer. Office Depot shares slumped 16.7 percent and OfficeMax shed 7.0 percent.

Hotel chain Marriott fell 2.7 percent after posting quarterly results that missed expectations.

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers also suffered from disappointing earnings, losing 9.1 percent.

Dell, which reported a 32 percent profit fall in 2012 that was nevertheless slightly better than expected, rose 0.2 percent.

Yahoo! fell 1.7 percent after unveiling a new homepage.

Sony slid 1.2 percent ahead of its PlayStation 4 news conference

The bond market was mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 2.02 percent from 2.03 percent late Tuesday, while the 30-year edged up to 3.21 percent from 3.20 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.

-AFP/ac

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Sony gets touchy-feely with new DualShock 4 controller for PS4

Sony's Mark Cerny demos the DualShock 4 controller.

(Credit:
CNET)

Turns out the leaks were right.

Alongside the unveiling of the PlayStation 4 today, Sony showed off the new controller that goes with it called the DualShock 4.

Key among the new features is a built-in touchpad that goes in the very center of the controller, adding an extra level of control and interaction with games and on-screen menus. There's also a built-in microphone jack, and a share button nestled next to the trigger buttons that lets gamers stream their gameplay live to friends in real-time.

Sony's lead system architect Mark Cerny demos the touchpad on the new PS4 controller.

(Credit:
CNET)

During its press conference, Sony promised that the new design improves the built-in rumble technology, as well as latency to cut down on lag between button presses and what's happening on screen. The new controller also makes use of a peripheral that plugs into the
PS4 and senses your depth and 3D position.

The design matches up with a series of leaks that hit ahead of Sony's unveiling, although some outlets believed the touch sensitive area was actually a secondary display.

It's typical for console-makers to debut a new controller alongside new system hardware. Sony, for its part, launched its first PlayStation 3 controller without rumble, adding it later on with the DualShock 3.

No word yet on price and availability for the DualShock 4.

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Police identify gunman in LA freeway shooting spree

Police investigate a shooting spree in Southern California

/

CBS Los Angeles

(CBS/AP) TUSTIN, Calif. - Southern California law enforcement authorities have identified the gunman in an unexplained shooting rampage as a 20-year-old unemployed part-time student named Ali Syed.

Tustin police Chief Scott Jordan says Syed lived at the Ladera Ranch residence where the first victim was slain.

Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino says that victim is a young woman in her 20s who has not been identified and is not related to the shooter.

The rampage early Tuesday left three victims dead and several wounded. The shooter killed himself.

More on Crimesider
February 19, 2013 - Los Angeles Freeway Shooting Update: Police say four dead including gunman after shooting spree
February 19, 2013 - Los Angeles Freeway Shooting: At least 3 dead, others wounded in shooting spree, police say

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Report Fingers Chinese Military Unit in US Hacks

A Virginia-based cyber security firm has released a new report alleging a specific Chinese military unit is likely behind one of the largest cyber espionage and attack campaigns aimed at American infrastructure and corporations.

In the report, released today by Mandiant, China's Unit 61398 is blamed for stealing "hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations" since 2006, including 115 targets in the U.S. Twenty different industrial sectors were targeted in the attacks, Mandiant said, from energy and aerospace to transportation and financial institutions.

Mandiant believes it has tracked Unit 61398 to a 12-story office building in Shanghai that could employ hundreds of workers.

"Once [Unit 61398] has established access [to a target network], they periodically revisit the victim's network over several months or years and steal broad categories of intellectual property, including technology blueprints, proprietary manufacturing processes, test results, business plans, pricing documents, partnership agreements, and emails and contact lists from victim organizations' leadership," the report says.

The New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant paper Monday, said digital forensic evidence presented by Mandiant pointing to the 12-story Shangai building as the likely source of the attacks has been confirmed by American intelligence officials. Mandiant was the firm that The Times said helped them investigate and eventually repel cyber attacks on their own systems in China last month.

Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied involvement in cyber intrusions and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said today that the claims in the Mandiant report were unsupported, according to a report by The Associated Press.

"To make groundless accusations based on some rough material is neither responsible nor professional," he reportedly said.

Mandiant's report was released a week after President Obama said in his State of the Union address that America must "face the rapidly growing threat from cyber attack."

"We know hackers steal people's identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy," he said.

Though Obama did not reference China or any country specifically, U.S. officials have previously accused the Asian nation of undertaking a widespread cyber espionage campaign.

Referring to alleged Chinese hacking in October 2011, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in an open committee meeting that he did not believe "that there is a precedent in history for such a massive and sustained intelligence effort by a government agency to blatantly steal commercial data and intellectual property."

Rogers said that cyber intrusions into American and other Western corporations by hackers working on behalf of Beijing -- allegedly including attacks on corporate giants like Google and Lockheed Martin -- amounted to "brazen and widespread theft."

"The Chinese have proven very, very good at hacking their way into very large American companies that spend a lot of money trying to protect themselves," cyber security expert and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said in an interview last week.

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Syria "Scud-type" missile said to kill 20 in Aleppo

AMMAN (Reuters) - A Syrian missile killed at least 20 people in a rebel-held district of Aleppo on Tuesday, opposition activists said, as the army turns to longer-range weapons after losing bases in the country's second-largest city.

The use of what opposition activists said was a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds against an Aleppo residential district came after rebels overran army bases over the past two months from which troops had fired artillery.

As the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, now a civil war, nears its two-year mark, rebels also landed three mortar bombs in the rarely-used presidential palace compound in the capital Damascus, opposition activists said on Tuesday.

The United Nations estimates 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict between largely Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's supporters among his minority Alawite sect. An international diplomatic deadlock has prevented intervention, as the war worsens sectarian tensions throughout the Middle East.

A Russian official said on Tuesday that Moscow, which is a long-time ally of Damascus, would not immediately back U.N. investigators' calls for some Syrian leaders to face the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Moscow has blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have increased pressure on Assad.

Casualties are not only being caused directly by fighting, but also by disruption to infrastructure and Syria's economy.

An estimated 2,500 people in a rebel-held area of northeastern Deir al-Zor province have been infected with typhoid, which causes diarrhea and can be fatal, due to drinking contaminated water from the Euphrates River, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

"There is not enough fuel or electricity to run the pumps so people drink water from the Euphrates which is contaminated, probably with sewage," the WHO representative in Syria, Elisabeth Hoff, told Reuters by telephone.

The WHO had no confirmed reports of deaths so far.

BURIED UNDER RUBBLE

In northern Aleppo, opposition activists said 25 people were missing under rubble of three buildings hit by a several-meter-long missile. They said remains of the weapon showed it to be a Scud-type missile of the type government forces increasingly use in Aleppo and in Deir a-Zor.

NATO said in December Assad's forces fired Scud-type missiles. It did not specify where they landed but said their deployment was an act of desperation.

Bodies were being gradually dug up, Mohammad Nour, an activist, said by phone from Aleppo.

"Some, including children, have died in hospitals," he said.

Video footage showed dozens of people scouring for victims and inspecting damage. A body was pulled from under collapsed concrete. At a nearby hospital, a baby said to have been dug out from wreckage was shown dying in the hands of doctors.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Opposition activists also reported fighting near the town of Nabak on the Damascus-Homs highway, another route vital for supplying forces in the capital loyal to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since the 1960s.

Rebels moved anti-aircraft guns into the eastern Damascus district of Jobar, adjacent to the city centre, as they seek to secure recent gains, an activist said.

"The rebels moved truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns to Jobar and are now firing at warplanes rocketing the district," said Damascus activist Moaz al-Shami.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told a news conference a U.N. war crimes report, which accuses military leaders and rebels of terrorizing civilians, was "not the path we should follow ... at this stage it would be untimely and unconstructive."

Syria is not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and the only way the court can investigate the situation is if it receives a referral from the Security Council, where Moscow is a permanent member.

(Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Jason Webb)

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Google shares top $800 despite Microsoft challenge

NEW YORK: Internet search king Google's shares pushed past $800 for the first time Tuesday despite a tough new challenge from Microsoft and looming European Union action over alleged privacy violations.

Google's closed at $806.85 on the Nasdaq exchange, up 1.8 percent from Friday's close, after having hit $807 during the day.

That pushed the company's market valuation to $266 billion. The shares were up 14 percent from the beginning of 2013 and 33 percent over the past 52 weeks.

On January 22, Google reported firm 2012 fourth-quarter gains, with profit up 6.7 percent from a year earlier at $2.89 billion. For the full year, Google's earnings grew 10 percent to $10.74 billion, on revenues topping $50 billion.

Several analysts strengthened their recommendations for the shares with price targets ranging from $800 to $900, the latter from Cantor Fitzgerald.

But the company faces fresh challenges.

In a new push for its Outlook email service, Microsoft has launched a negative ad campaign against Google, asking readers if they have been "Scroogled" by Google's use of personal data from users of its Gmail service.

"Think Google respects your privacy? Think again," the Microsoft ads say.

"Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads."

Microsoft says its Outlook service will not scan emails to target online ads.

On Monday France's CNIL data protection agency said that European data privacy regulators intend to take action against Google after it failed to follow their orders to comply with EU privacy laws.

"At the end of a four-month delay accorded to Google to comply with the European data protection directive and to implement effectively (our) recommendations, no answer has been given," said CNIL.

National authorities responsible for enforcing data protection laws in the EU said they plan to set up a working group to "coordinate their coercive actions which should be implemented before the summer."

-AFP/ac

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uBiome project to sequence the bacteria that live on us

Researchers will be testing swabs taken from thousands of paying volunteers.

(Credit:
uBiome Project)

Oxford University Ph.D. student Jessica Richman, who today finished raising some $350,000 from more than 2,500 people wanting to take part in the uBiome project, isn't shying away from reality: "Yes, we are going to be sampling people's poo," she told the Guardian this week.

And for the squeamish, she offered an asterisk: "You'll only have to wipe it on the toilet paper."

The uBiome project is a "citizen science" effort to sequence the genomes of the trillions of bacteria that colonize our bodies and likely play pivotal roles, both good and bad, in our health.

By sequencing the bacteria of volunteers (provided via Q-tips swabs of mouths, noses, ears, genitals, and guts) at a lab at the University of California in San Francisco, and then having volunteers log into a Web site to complete health surveys, Richman and her team hope to eventually understand what causes a range of health issues, from breast cancer and Crohn's to dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The uBiome project has far surpassed its original $100,000 goal (deadline was this morning). Apparently plenty of people are not afraid to sample their own feces.

And it turns out that sequencing the many strains of bacteria that live in and on our bodies -- known as the "microbiome" -- may be every bit as complicated as sequencing the human genome; after all, microbes outnumber human cells 10 to 1, according to the researchers.

The results may provide a good deal of information about the roots of various health issues given that "about 30 percent of the small molecules found in the blood come from the microbiome," Richman said. "So it certainly looks like some of the illnesses we see are linked to it."

Various studies are implicating specific strains of bacteria in a range of health outcomes, both good and bad. The science gets extremely complex, though, because the bacteria do not live in a vacuum and are interacting with other bacteria all the time.

Richman, who calls this "exploratory science," does not shy away from the challenge and hopes to discover correlations between bacteria strains and health outcomes to better understand both health and disease.

Meanwhile, volunteers who have paid into the project have the option to not only access details gleaned from their own, er, swabs, but to share that data if they choose. "Your data is yours -- you can download it, share it, do whatever you want with it," the team writes on its funding site. "We encourage you to opt-in to share your data with our scientists, but we respect your privacy and will not force you to do so. The data is also anonymized and private."

As for whom the researchers hoped would volunteer:

Everyone! skinny, fat, sick, healthy, Coke, Pepsi, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, babies, grandmothers, lactose intolerant, gluten allergic, happy, sad, smoker, drinker, bald, vegan, smelly, bad breath, brown hair, blue eyes, blue hair, brown eyes, Atkins diet, high carb diet, sleepy, gassy, anxious, horny, asexual, smart, dyslexic, gorgeous, pregnant, and completely average. Babies, older people, women, men...everyone!

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