expandinghead.net

Challenged by J. D. Hayworth from the airwaves, and soon in a primary, John McCain has moved starkly, and often awkwardly, to the right.

The worldwide recall will affect about 437,000 units of the 2010 Prius and other hybrid models, according to the company’s filing.

Republicans this month will bring President Obama a set of ideas and a more modest health care plan.

Russia’s preferred candidate is the apparent winner, but the starkly contested presidential race contrasts sharply with Russia’s recent history.

Brushing aside international threats of stricter sanctions, Iran reportedly began enriching its uranium on Tuesday.

Some families with deep roots in Manhattan kept their heads a few years ago when the market overheated.

Rajendra K. Pachauri and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change face accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest.

Robert S. Khuzami, the head of enforcement, must restore confidence that the S.E.C. can police Wall Street.

At least 28 people are dead and another 1,500 are stranded following multiple avalanches in Afghanistan.

Results of a crime data survey have made critics and admirers of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wonder about the reliability of data underpinning policy decisions on the budget, education and other issues.

Top Breaking News Stories from CBSNews.com

Japanese Auto-Giant Extends Recall Over Brake Problem to All Countries; Total of About 400,000 Vehicles

President Tells Katie Couric "People Understand What Motivates Me"

Foot of Snow Expected for Washington; Philadelphia Braces for 18 Inches

State TV Report says U.N. Nuclear Agency Monitoring Enrichment, Which Flies in Face of Western Demands

Powerful Democrat Representative from Pennsylvania Served 36 Years in the House, Dies at Age of 77

Japanese Auto-Giant Extends Recall Over Brake Problem to All Countries; Total of About 400,000 Vehicles

CBS News Correspondent Mandy Clark Samples Marine Corp Life; Cold, Wet, Miserable and Waiting to Attack

Democrat Flatly Rejects Rumors of Pending Report Exposing Womanizing, Drug Use, Insists He'll Run in Election

Foot of Snow Expected for Washington; Philadelphia Braces for 18 Inches

Richard Heene to Spend Days Working, Nights in Monitored Dormitory to Finish Sentence for Hoax

State TV Report says U.N. Nuclear Agency Monitoring Enrichment, Which Flies in Face of Western Demands

31-Year-Old Drank Mountain Dew to Stay Hydrated While Buried in Southwestern Colorado

Conrad Murray Pleads Not Guilty as Lawyer Vows to "Fight Like Hell"; But Family Seeks Justice 8 Months after Pop Icon's Death

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby Says He Will Release Several "Holds" Used to Get Money for Home-State Projects

Republicans Leave Little Room for Compromise on Health Care Reform in Response to Obama's Proposal for a Health Care Summit

Report: Homeland Security Assessed Wisconsin Pro- and Anti-Abortion Rights Activists Even Though No Threat

CBS News' Mandy Clark Samples Marine Corp Life in Afghanistan; Cold, Wet, Miserable and Waiting to Attack

Republican Gets Comeuppance after Obama Teleprompter Remark, but Real Problem is Her Lack of a Presidential Mien

More than 106 Million People Watched Saints Beat Colts, Surpassing the 1983 Finale of "M-A-S-H"

USA Today Presents Results of "Ad Meter" Ratings; Snickers Betty White Ad, Doritos, Bud Light Score with Quirky Commercials

Msnbc.com is a leader in breaking news and original journalism.

Toyota announced that it is recalling about 400,000 of its signature Prius green cars and other hybrids worldwide for braking problems.

How far back do potential braking problems with the Toyota Prius go? The answer may be much further than believed, and could involve vehicles dating back to the 2005 model-year.

A second major storm in less than a week was blowing  toward the Mid-Atlantic region, where plows still hadn't touched some roads.

Another jolt of Saints euphoria is on tap for New Orleans Tuesday when the Super Bowl champs board floats borrowed from Mardi Gras krewes for a victory parade through the grateful city.

Toyota has friends in high places in Washington, including some of the very people now investigating the Japanese automaker.

Recalls and a slow response to safety questions have put a dent in the market value of cars long seen as money in the bank for their owners.

Pau Gasol had 21 points and 19 rebounds to lead five players in double figures, and the Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Antonio Spurs 101-89 Monday night without injured Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum.

Challenged by J. D. Hayworth from the airwaves, and soon in a primary, John McCain has moved starkly, and often awkwardly, to the right.

A spokesman says Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps officer who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 77.

Republicans gave a chilly reception Monday to President Barack Obama's invitation to discuss health care in a bipartisan, televised setting later this month, part of the White House effort to revive the stalled legislation.

People lined up by the hundreds to buy Monday’s Times-Picayune, which hollered “AMEN!� from its front page. The Saints’ Super Bowl victory was a prayer answered in this struggling city, and New Orleans itself seemed different for it.

For a second straight year Doritos let the public create its Super Bowl ads. And evidently the public knows what the public wants.

The doctor who prosecutors say caused Michael Jackson’s death has been released from jail after posting $75,000 in bail, only a few hours after surrendering to authorities.

A critical safety net for babies — that heelprick of blood taken from every newborn in the U.S. — is facing an ethics attack.

Authorities looking for the cause of an explosion that killed five people at a power plant  launch a criminal investigation, saying they could not rule out criminal negligence.

Howard Stern told his satellite radio listeners on Monday that he is considering leaving Sirius — and radio altogether — to become a judge on “American Idol.�

Avalanches on a mountain pass north of Kabul have killed at least 28 people, with another 1,500 stranded in their vehicles on snow-blocked roads, Afghan officials said Tuesday.

Thousands of Afghan soldiers and police will join U.S. and NATO troops in an offensive in southern Afghanistan, playing their biggest role in any joint operation of the Afghan war.

If you want a pillow and blanket in coach on American Airlines, it's going to cost you. The airline will charge $8 for a pillow and blanket, beginning May 1.

Marcus Morris scored 18 points to lead No. 1 Kansas to an 80-68 victory over No. 14 Texas on Monday night and the Jayhawks easily handled an opponent that a few weeks ago was supposed to challenge them for the Big 12 title.

A magnitude 5.7-earthquake shook southern Mexico near the Oaxaca coast Monday, setting off evacuation alarms and swaying buildings as far away as Mexico City.

In Haiti's devastated capital city, early spring rains threaten to cause landslides and bring about health problems in the makeshift camps where more than 500,000 people are living.

The discovery has punched a 170-ton hole in China's promises to overhaul its food safety system. Officials say they've found yet another case where large amounts of tainted milk powder from the country's 2008 scandal that should have been destroyed were instead repackaged.

The drama on the sidelines of Haiti's earthquake, in which 10 American missionaries were arrested trying to take children out of the country, was a fiasco waiting to happen. By Kari Huus.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he is skeptical that the federal government would cover the cost of trying Sept. 11 suspects in Manhattan and he wants a guarantee from the Obama administration.

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour will scan their spacecraft overnight to search for any signs of heat shield damage from their early Monday launch.

Ellen DeGeneres and Simon Cowell reportedly got off on the wrong foot on their first day together behind the judges' table, and their relationship has not improved over time.

FOX News Channel - We Report. You Decide.

Toyota says it is recalling about 437,000 Prius and other hybrid vehicles worldwide to fix brake problems — the latest in a string of embarrassing safety lapses at the world's largest automaker.

Iran began enriching uranium to 20 percent purity level Tuesday in defiance of world powers but under the supervision of inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, state media reported.

Some Republicans privately worry the president may be laying a trap to portray their health reform ideas as flimsy
• Administration, GOP List Demands Ahead of Talks
• YOU DECIDE: Will Dems Give GOP Ideas a Shot?

Congressman says Rep. Murtha's intestine was damaged during gallbladder surgery, leading to hospitalization
• Remembering Rep. Murtha | Gov. to Set Election Date
• Eulogy | You Can Die From Gallbladder Surgery?

A 28-year-old man was pulled from the rubble of a market in Port-au-Prince on Monday and has been admitted to the University of Miami's field hospital in the capital, adjacent to the airport, according to hospital officials.

At least 28 people are dead and another 1,500 are stranded following multiple avalanches in Afghanistan.

North Korea's Kim Jong Il reportedly dispatched his top nuclear envoy to Beijing on Tuesday to discuss restarting nuclear disarmament talks, a day after pledging Pyongyang's commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

A new report by the International Planned Parenthood Federation is advocating that children as young as 10 be given extensive sex education, including an awareness of sex's pleasures.

NATO and Afghan officials on Tuesday urged Taliban militants holding a southern town to lay down their arms and warned civilians there to "keep your heads down" as U.S. and Afghan troops prepare their first major offensive of the U.S. troop surge.

A British teacher was fired from his job after complaining that some of his Muslim students were celebrating the Sept. 11 hijackers as 'heroes,' the Daily Mail reported.

The state would become only the fourth to offer a pro-choice plate and the first to require legislative approval for it.

The powerful explosion blew apart large swaths of the nearly completed 620-megawatt Kleen Energy plant as workers for the construction company O&G Industries Inc. were purging a gas line Sunday morning.

When Angela Boneva went to renew her passport in 2003, the State Department told her she wasn't an American citizen.

A U.S. soldier has been accused of holding his 4-year-old daughter's head underwater because she would not recite her ABCs.

BEFORE FAME: Who sold ballpoint pens? Who drove a school bus? Who was a Hooters girl? Find out what Aniston, Clooney, Depp and more did back in the day

Michael Jackson's doctor pleads not guilty to manslaughter | VIDEO | LIVESHOTS: Housley on Jacko Case | SLIDESHOW

MAXIM EXCLUSIVE: Meet Alessandra Torresani, the SyFy actress who is breaking nerds' hearts across the world

SLIDESHOW: Levi Johnston's Playgirl cover has been released, and it ain't pretty. But he's not the only one to take off one article of clothing too many...

HOT LIST: With Pam Anderson rumored to be signing on to the new season of 'Dancing With the Stars,' we count down the top hottest contestants of all time

THEN/NOW: The 1990s classic starred a bunch of Hollywood's up-and-coming stars. Some kept getting bigger and better, some kind of went the other way...

SCENE/HERD: Beyonce takes her show to Brazil, Pam Anderson lets it all hang out in Miami, Orlando Bloom is all wet, and more...

Disney star's kids clothing line is slammed for short styles and animal prints, dubbed 'kids lingerie' by some | SLIDESHOW: Cute or Creepy?

SLIDESHOW: The pioneering, historic work of one man makes it easy to remember that each flake is unique. | Read more

SLIDESHOW: Invitation lost in the mail? Then check out YOUR ideas on what Obama's Super Bowl party was like

News for nerds, stuff that matters

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes "Apple's reticence to reveal details prior to a product's launch is legendary. But when Apple extends this silence beyond a product's unveiling, historically this has meant that the product cannot deliver the functionality that analysts and journalists are asking about. InfoWorld's Galen Gruman lists eight key questions for the iPad, about all of which Apple has kept silent. Can you save and transfer documents to the iPad? Does the iPad support Microsoft Exchange email? Does the iPad support VPN? Configuration management? 'I have no doubt the iPad will be compelling to some users. But I now have major concerns that it will fulfill the potential beyond being an iTunes delivery screen that I and other industry observers saw,' Gruman writes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A piece up at Mashable explores how some schools and universities are finding success at integrating social gaming into their education curriculum. Various game-related programs are getting assistance these days from sources like the government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "For the less well-to-do educator, the Federation of American Scientists has developed a first-person shooter-inspired cellular biology curriculum. Gamers explore the fully-interactive 3D world of an ill patient and assist the immune system in fighting back a bacterial infection. Dr. Melanie Ann Stegman has been evaluating the educational impacts of the game and is optimistic about her preliminary findings. 'The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing. Their questions were insightful. I felt like I was having a discussion with scientist colleagues,' said Stegman. Perhaps more importantly, the video game excites students about science. Motivating more youngsters to adopt a science-related career track has became a major education initiative of the Obama administration. So desperate to find a solution that motivates students to become scientists, the government has even enlisted Darpa, the Department of Defense’s 'mad scientist' research organization, to figure out a solution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "The only smartphone Linus Torvalds doesn't hate is that much less unlikable now that Google has quietly chopped $200 off its early termination fee on the Nexus One. Customers who cancel the service had been on the hook for $550, including a $350 Google cancellation charge. Google has reduced their fee to $150 — but users are still liable for a $200 ETF from T-Mobile. Users have a 14-day grace period during which they do not have to pay either charge, although they may be hit with a restocking fee. The $350 total fee matches one of the highest in the industry, charged by Verizon. Google did not announce the change but simply altered its online terms-of-service document." The price cut could add momentum to a phone that, by one reckoning, costs only $49 unlocked.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Many games developers have been pursuing agile development, and we are now beginning to witness the debris and chaos it has caused. While there have been some successes, there have also been many casualties. As the industry at large is moving away from the phantasmagoria of Agile, Gwaredd Mountain, Technical Director at Climax Studios, looks at Post-Agile and what this might mean for the games industry."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dan Jones writes "As discussed here last year, IBM has made good on its promise to release the Power7 processor (and servers) in the first half of 2010. The Power7 processor adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up-time, according to Big Blue. Power7 chips will run between 3.0GHz and 4.14GHz and will come with four, six, or eight cores. The chips are being made using the 45-nm process technology. New Power7 servers (up to 64 cores for now) are said to deliver twice the performance of older Power6 systems, but are four times more energy efficient. Power7 servers will run AIX and Linux." And reader shmG notes Intel's release of a new Itanium server processor after two years of delays. The Power7 specs would seem to put the new Intel chip in the shade.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "What I feared has come true: after buying Sun, Oracle had a look at its accessibility group and made big cuts in it by firing the most important contributors to the Linux accessibility tools. This is a very sad day for disabled people, as it means we do not really have full-time developers any more." The coverage in OSTATIC has a few more details, including the caution: "This just shows that all too few companies are sponsoring a11y work. If one company laying off a couple of developers spells trouble for the project, then there were problems before that happened" (thanks to reader dave c-b for pointing this out).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bridges writes "The V3VEE project has announced the release of version 1.2 of the Palacios virtual machine monitor following the successful testing of Palacios on 4096 nodes of the Sandia Red Storm supercomputer, the 17th-fastest in the world. The added overhead of virtualization is often a show-stopper, but the researchers observed less than 5% overhead for two real, communication-intensive applications running in a virtual machine on Red Storm. Palacios 1.2 supports virtualization of both desktop x86 hardware and Cray XT supercomputers using either AMD SVM or Intel VT hardware virtualization extensions, and is an active open source OS research platform supporting projects at multiple institutions. Palacios is being jointly developed by researchers at Northwestern University, the University of New Mexico, and Sandia National Labs." The ACM's writeup has more details of the work at Sandia.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

angry tapir writes "Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI). The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government. (As we discussed a week ago, Denmark has already decided to choose ODF over OOXML.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

natharward writes "A new development in nano-level diagnostic tests has been applied as a lab on a chip that successfully screened viruses entirely by their size. The chip's traps are size-specific, which means even tiny concentrations of viruses or other particles won't escape detection. For medicine, this development is promising for future lab diagnostics that could detect viruses before symptoms kick in and damage begins, well ahead of when traditional lab tests are able to catch them. Aaron Hawkins, the BYU professor leading the work, says his team is now gearing up to make chips with multiple, progressively smaller slots, so that a single sample can be used to screen for particles of varying sizes. One could fairly simply determine which proteins or viruses are present based on which walls have particles stacked against them. After this is developed, Hawkins says, 'If we decided to make these things in high volume, I think within a year it could be ready.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nikki4 writes to tell us that in giving some major improvement tweaks to its existing voice recognition tool for the Smartphone, Google is aiming for new translator software that will provide instant translation of foreign languages. "The company has already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week. Google also has a voice recognition system that enables phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in. Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller’s voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MikeChino writes "As battery manufacturers race to produce more efficient lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, some scientists are looking to make the cars themselves a power source. Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery. Once perfected, scientists hope the substance will replace standard car bodies, making vehicles up to 15 percent lighter and significantly extending the range of electric vehicles."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study conducted by researchers at University College London shows that boredom can kill you. The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study. Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report said, "The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Top Stories

President Grant signs the law creating what will become the Weather Bureau and eventually the National Weather Service.

The Macworld trade show goes on without Steve Jobs. But will it live another year?

Ultrahigh-speed video reveals six lightning strokes in startling slo-mo.

Saving up for a rainy day? Consider using some of that cash on an umbrella from Blunt. This reinforced dome will hold up to gusts short of hurricane force.

Advances in product design and prototyping signal the start of a new industrial revolution, Wired's top editor argues in his latest cover story. Anderson and Wired Executive Editor Thomas Goetz discuss the implications of these radical changes in this week's Storyboard podcast.

The world's first jumbo jet, Boeing's 747, shows that it's ready for service.

A backyard radio astronomer and artist in New Mexico has captured sound recordings of the newly noisy sun showering the Earth with particles.

Apple's iPad could sound the death knell for JooJoo, a tablet from an an unknown Singapore-based startup that was once the talk of gadget blogs.

The federal judiciary is being told to instruct jurors not to tweet, Facebook or perform online research for cases they are involved in. The developments follow a rash of twittering, facebooking and internet researching by federal jurors — some of which have led to mistrials.

Google is set to turn Gmail into a communications dashboard with rolling status updates. It's a bid to keep up with Facebook and make Gmail the place users turn to when they want to send messages, no matter what the medium.

The Boeing 747-8 made it's inaugural flight, more than a year behind schedule.

Shai Agassi brokers a deal to electrify one-third of the country's fleet within 5 years.

William Tenn, one of science fiction's most imaginative writers, has passed. Tenn created vivid scenarios of mind-blowing alien worlds in novels and stories that illuminated emotional, political and ethic issues of good old humanity. And as a teacher, he inspired other aspiring writers. Including this one.

British artist Nick Gentry is using floppy disk drives to created mixed-media portraits.

GM's date with destiny is set, but there's still no word on what the electric car will cost.

February 8 marks the centennial of Boy Scouts in America. At a time when shows like 'Man Vs Wild' and 'Survivorman' are experiencing immense popularity, wouldn’t it make sense that they'd see a surge in enrollment? But Boy Scouts, in many ways, are a struggling organization with membership plummeting annually.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — With the disaster-relief phase ending, the streets of Port-au-Prince are now crowded with the white SUVs of international aid and development agencies shuttling purposefully around town. But while the focus may have shifted to rebuilding Haiti, rising unrest over aid and food distribution could sideline efforts to begin reconstruction in earnest.

If you’re a geeky guy looking to romance a geeky girl, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been with her forever or if she’s a new interest; realize that conventional romantic overtures won’t always work. Think outside the box. Here's some help.

Google debuted a Super Bowl ad Sunday. The ad tells the story of a romance helped along by a series of Google searches conducted by (one is left to imagine) a young man whose simple plan to study abroad in Paris ends with his need to know how to assemble a crib.

By building on the original's creepy setting and tweaking the troubling relationship between Big Daddies and Little Sisters, this sequel becomes a worthy successor to a groundbreaking game.

A renovated missile silo in the middle of the Arizona desert is a reminder of more chaotic times. Ex-crew members share their stories as we take a tour.

Scott Brown considers the pros and cons of MindSign Neuromarketing's plans to create the "neurocinema," the real-time monitoring of the brain's reaction to movies.

An Austrian monk is anything but pea-shy when he explains the principles of heredity.

Do you wonder where those ads for work at home, teeth whitening and so on are coming from, and why they appear on otherwise respectable websites? The answer is complicated, but becoming less so.

Former Air Force sergeant Brian Regan buried stolen government secrets and encrypted the coordinates, hoping to sell the stash to the highest bidder. Then he had to crack his own code.

Can aging gamers compete with twitchy teens on today's increasingly complicated virtual battlefields? War is extra hellish when you're too old, or too busy, to fight off the adolescent hordes in games like MAG and Modern Warfare 2.

Evidence suggests that Apple's decision to use a smaller-than-usual micro SIM card in the iPad was motivated by business reasons, not a lack of space. The company is likely trying to prevent iPhone customers from using the same SIM cards in their iPads.

Scientists create an atomic clock that uses quantum logic to be precise within one second in 3.7 billion years.

The Authors Guild says it supports the proposed Google Books settlement to avoid the same mistakes the Recording Industry of America made in its litigation campaign against music pirates. Namely: if you can't beat piracy, you might as well as join it.

Star Wars fans unload on the creator of their beloved franchise in the crowdsourced film, which makes its world premiere in March at the South by Southwest film festival. Writer and director Alexandre O. Philippe talks about weeding through thousands of submissions from passionate fans to concoct his "participatory documentary."