Smart car maker to unveil tiny pickup truck

 Smart, the Daimler division that produces the super-tiny Smart ForTwo minicar, will unveil a pickup truck version at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

Police saved lives in postal shooting

A heavy police presence at a nearby mall for the holidays and a rapid response by employees helped save lives when a gunman armed with several pistols opened fire at Montgomery's main post office, postal officials said.

SOPA/Protect IP in short

http://americancensorship.org/

Stop Congress From Taking Over The Internet

Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation

The Internet Blacklist Legislation - known as PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House - is a threatening sequel to last year's COICA Internet censorship bill.  Like its predecessor, this legislation invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation. Urge your members of Congress to reject this Internet blacklist campaign in both its forms!

Big media and its allies in Congress are billing the Internet Blacklist Legislation as a new way to prevent online infringement. But innovation and free speech advocates know that this initiative is nothing more than a dangerous wish list that will compromise Internet security while doing little or nothing to encourage creative expression.

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities.  While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough).  And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”). 

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a hold on the Senate version of the bill, taking a principled stand against a very dangerous bill. But every Senator and Representative should be opposing the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA. Contact your members of Congress today to speak out!

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New Phase of Water Discovered

Besides vapor, ice and liquid, a fourth form of water may exist,

Asteroid on Track for Close Encounter with Earth

An asteroid four times the length of a football field will pass closer to Earth than the moon when it hurtles through our solar system tomorrow morning.

Economic Growth in U.S., Though Still Modest, Speeds Up

Economic growth in the United States picked up in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday, in an encouraging sign that the recovery, while still painfully slow, has not stalled.

F-22 Raptor, America's Most Expensive Fighter, Grounded Again After Oxygen Scare

For the second time this year the Air Force has grounded dozens of F-22 Raptors, some of the world's most sophisticated and expensive stealth fighter jets, after another pilot appeared to suffer from a lack of oxygen mid-flight.

Japanese calculates pi to 10 trillion digits

Shigeru Kondo of Iida, Nagano Prefecture, worked with software designed by Northwestern University grad student Alexander Yee, and followed up their 2010 feat of reckoning pi to 5 trillion digits.

Bear Cub in Grocery Store

A bear cub was caught on tape climbing on the produce section of an Alaska grocery store.

Exotic Animals on the Loose in Ohio After Park Owner Found Dead

Dozens of animals escaped from a wild-animal preserve that houses bears, big cats and other beasts, and the owner later was found dead there, said police, who shot several of the animals and urged nearby residents to stay indoors.

Wacky Signs From Occupy Wall Street

The photo editors at ABCNews.com have been covering the Occupy Wall Street protests from day one and combed through thousands of images to find the very best.

Plane Crashes on Florida Turnpike

A single-engine plane crash landed on the Florida Turnpike outside Miami Wednesday, but the cause of the crash remained unclear.

United States Marks 10 years in Afghan War. Was Anything Accomplished?

The nation marks a moment Friday that it never really expected, 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Out of sight and off the minds of millions of Americans, the war is the most prolonged conflict this country has been engaged in since Vietnam.

Steve Jobs dies at 56; Apple's co-founder transformed computers and culture

His legacy of blockbuster products includes the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Meanwhile, Jobs' other firm, Pixar, revolutionized computer animation.

CERN Measures Faster-Than-Light Particle

So the big news out of CERN this afternoon is the Associated Press report that researchers have clocked a subatomic particle traveling faster than the speed of light.

Half a Second Before Japan Tsunami

Following is an email that was sent to me by one of my friends.  I have not fact checked this, but non-the-less, it is still very cool.

Freed Hikers Discuss Life in Iranian Prison

Freed U.S. hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer told reporters gathered at a New York hotel that they were so isolated in the Iranian prison where they were held for over two years that they didn't know they were being freed until minutes before their release last week.

Shutdown looms as Congress debates spending plan

The standoff continues Monday between the House and the Senate over emergency funding, which is holding up a short-term spending measure to keep government running into the new fiscal year that begins this weekend.

The measure includes additional money to fill the almost depleted emergency aid coffers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Army Corps of Engineers following Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee, wildfires and tornadoes so far this year.

House Republicans have passed a bill that cuts spending elsewhere to offset some of the increased disaster relief aid. Democrats oppose offsets for emergency aid, saying disaster relief for Americans in need should be unencumbered. The Democratic-led Senate rejected the House measure on Friday by a 59-36 vote.

The package would fund the government for the first seven weeks of the new fiscal year that starts Saturday.

For the third time in six months, a partial government shutdown is possible if the Republican-led House and Democratic-controlled Senate fail to agree on the short-term spending plan by Friday -- the end of the current fiscal year.

The measure currently under deliberation -- which would keep Washington running through November 18 -- includes critical new disaster funding assistance for states hit hard by Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee, and a series of recent wildfires and tornadoes.

But Republicans want less disaster aid than their Democratic counterparts, and want to pay for it partly by cutting funding for programs designed to spur clean energy innovation.

The House passed a "common sense measure," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters during the Senate vote. "It's time for the Senate to move."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced his intention to push for a new vote Monday on a compromise package incorporating the GOP's lower overall disaster relief spending levels while eliminating any cuts to clean energy programs.

Congressmen and senators need to "cool off for a little bit," Reid said Friday. "There's a compromise here."

"More reasonable heads will prevail," he predicted.

Meanwhile, the agency responsible for doling out disaster relief money -- FEMA -- could run out of funds as soon as Monday, according to Reid.

"If Congress does allow the balance of the Disaster Relief Fund to reach zero, there are laws that govern federal agency operations in the absence of funding," according to a FEMA statement released Friday. "Under law, FEMA would be forced to temporarily shut down disaster recovery and assistance operations, including financial assistance to individuals until Congress appropriated more funds. This would include all past and current FEMA recovery operations."

FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen told CNN Friday that the agency is exploring other funding options as a way to continue providing disaster relief.

The House GOP legislation includes $3.65 billion in new disaster relief funding -- $1 billion in emergency funds available when the bill is enacted and roughly $2.6 billion to be budgeted for those federal response agencies for the 2012 fiscal year that begins October 1.

One key sticking point is that the House bill requires that the $1 billion in immediate disaster funding be offset with $1.5 billion in cuts to a loan program that helps automakers retool their operations to make more fuel-efficient cars. Another $100 million would be cut from an alternative energy loan program that provided funding for the solar panel firm Solyndra, a company that declared bankruptcy late last month despite receiving a $535 million federal guarantee in 2009.

Last week, the Senate passed a spending bill with bipartisan support that would provide $6.9 billion for FEMA and other federal agencies, to be used both for immediate disaster relief as well as in the new fiscal year. The Senate version required no spending offsets.

Democrats have said they will continue to oppose any offsets to counter the emergency spending for natural disasters.

Changes to Netflix

Today Netflix announced via their blogs that there would be changes to their popular business and service.  Here is the exact text that the Co-founder and CEO typed to announce the changes.