10/16/2012
A Pakistani youth places an oil lamp next to a photograph of teen activist Malala Yousufzai on Friday, October 12, in Karachi. Malala, 14, was shot in the head by the Pakistan Taliban in an assassination attempt on Tuesday. 
Pakistani school girls pray for the recovery of teen activist Malala Yousufzai at their school in Peshawar on Friday. 
Pakistani hospital workers carry Malala on a stretcher at a hospital following the attack on Tuesday, October 9. Malala was shot in the head while riding home in a school van in the Taliban-heavy Swat Valley, officials said. 
Supporters hold portraits of Malala as they pray for her well-being in Karachi, Pakistan, on Wednesday. Malala gained fame for blogging about how girls should have rights in Pakistan, including the right to learn. 
A Pakistani Muslim prays for Malala during Friday prayers in Karachi. Malala, whose writing earned her Pakistan's first National Peace Prize, also encouraged young people to take a stand against the Taliban -- and to not hide in their bedrooms. 
Supporters place candles to pay tribute to Malala in Islamabad on Wednesday. 
A Pakistani female activist holds a photograph of Malala and prays for her recovery in Islamabad on Saturday. 
Pakistani students pray for Malala at a school in Mingora on Thursday. 
Pakistani Muslims bow their heads and pray for Malala during Friday prayers in Karachi. 
Pakistani school girls pray for the Malala's recovery on Wednesday. Over the weekend, the teen moved her limbs after doctors "reduced sedation to make a clinical assessment," military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa said. 
A Pakistani female covers her face during prayers in Karachi on Wednesday. 
Pakistani civil society activists carry banners in Islamabad on Wednesday as they shout ant-Taliban slogans during a protest against the assassination attempt. 
Children of Pakistani journalists and civil society activists light candles in Islamabad on Wednesday. 
Pakistani Christians attend a mass prayer for the recovery of Malala at Fatima Church in Islamabad on Thursday. 
Pakistani Christians attend a mass praying for the recovery of Malala at a church in Lahore on Sunday. 
A global symbol, but still just a kid
Attack on Pakistani schoolgirl galvanizes anti-Taliban feeling
New-found planet has 4 suns
(CNN) -- Thirty five years ago, a scene in the first "Star Wars" film captivated movie-goers: Luke Skywalker peering across the landscape of Tatooine -- a desert planet dominated by a pair of setting suns. This week, reality trumped (science) fiction with an image even more enthralling: two amateur astronomers poring through data from deep, distant skies and discovering a planet with four suns. NASA's website calls the phenomenon a circumbinary planet, or a planet that orbits two suns. Rare enough on its own -- only six other circumbinary planets are known to exist -- this planet is orbited by two more distant stars, making it the first known quadruple sun system. Researches presented the finding Monday night at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Reno, Nevada. The discovery of the four-sun planet by amateur scientists takes crowdsourcing to new heights. The expression, coined by Wired magazine editor Jeff Howe, describes tasks that are outsourced to a disparate group of people to come up with a solution. In this case, the Planet Hunters group made data from NASA's $600 million Kepler telescope available to the public through its website and coordinates their findings with Yale astronomers. In combing through the data, "Citizen scientists" Robert Gagliano and Kian Jek spied anomalies that confirmed the existence of the special planet, now known as PH1 -- short for Planet Hunters 1 -- the first heavenly body found by the online citizen science project. The planet is a little bigger than Neptune, with a radius about six times greater than Earth. "I celebrate this discovery for the wow-factor of a planet in a four-star system," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. "Most importantly, I celebrate this discovery as the fruit of exemplary human cooperation -- cooperation between scientists and citizens who give of themselves for the love of stars, knowledge, and exploration."   |
Readers weigh in on debate questions
 The two candidates, seen in this composite of file photos, are set to debate on Tuesday night. What would you ask them? By nbcnews.com Tuesday night's presidential debate will feature a town hall-style format, where the two candidates will answer questions from a selected group of voters on a wide range of issues. Instead of the two candidates sitting together at a table, or standing behind lecterns, with a moderator directing the discussion, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will talk directly to individual voters and attempt to answer their questions and concerns. Participants in this format will be selected by the Gallup polling organization, their questions will be submitted to the moderator, CNN's Candy Crowley, but asked by the individual voters themselves. RELATED: Our original request for your questions Over the weekend, we asked readers of NBCNews.com to submit the questions they would ask if given the opportunity to participate in the debate and we received over 4,800 responses. The questions covered a wide array of topics and concerns. Many were addressed to a single candidate -- pointed questions asking the president for specifics about the recent events in Libya, or queries directed toward Romney and comments he made about "47 percent" of Americans at a private fundraiser. Other questions were put to both candidates -- on jobs, the economy, foreign policy, and health care. But outside of those, readers had questions on all kinds of issues: The debt and deficit, the environment, immigration, gun ownership, reproductive rights, the war on drugs, the tone of the political debate in Washington, religion and, yes, even one posing the now-revoked Pizza Hut challenge to ask the candidates to choose between sausage or pepperoni. How will this week's town hall debate format benefit and work against both Mitt Romney and President Obama? What to make of the recent round of polls? NBC News' Chuck Todd joins Morning Joe to discuss. We can't reprint all the questions in full, but we culled through the submissions to identify the major themes our readers are most interested in. Here we've highlighted some of the more prominent areas of questioning we received, along with some actual queries, and the general positions of the candidates. (The names and locations of our NBCNews.com participants are not included because not all the e-mail submissions included them.) Help for middle-and lower-income Americans and the unemployed "Why do we hear all about the middle class but nothing about the poor people?" "I'm seeing some hiring in our area, but mostly part time with no benefits. Businesses would rather hire two or more part-time employees than one full-time employee which would require them to provide benefits. The lack of work hours prevents these people from affording any sort of stability or standard of living. What would you do stimulate full-time hiring rather than the part-time hiring we have now?" "How do they plan to deal with the rampant age discrimination that is going on for workers in their 40s and 50s who were displaced by the economic downturn of the past four years?" Where the candidates stand: Last summer Obama proposed a new stimulus program which would use federal funds to prevent up to 280,000 public school teacher layoffs, pay for modernizing 35,000 public schools, and give tax credits to firms which hired long-term unemployed people. Romney has said his program of tax simplification, increased trade with Latin America, increased energy production, and more efficient job training would create millions of jobs. Romney has proposed to lower income tax rates, but also to curb or eliminate tax preferences and deductions so that his entire income tax overhaul would be revenue neutral. Jen Psaki, the traveling press secretary for the Obama campaign, explains how the president is preparing for Tuesday's debate and whether he will handle it differently from the previous one. He expects that there would be both income growth and federal revenue growth resulting from a more efficient tax system. He said in the first debate with Obama, "I will not reduce the share (of taxes) paid by high-income individuals." Right now, people in the top 20 percent of the income distribution pay nearly 70 percent of all federal taxes and people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution pay 24 percent of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. Romney also said, "I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families." Obama has proposed to raise taxes on people earning more than $200,000 (single filers) and $250,000 (married couples filing jointly). And he has already raised taxes on them in the Affordable Care Act by imposing higher Medicare taxes. Also, employees with high-value employer-provided health insurance ("Cadillac plans") will find that their plans will be hit with a new tax in 2018 on the value of the coverage exceeding $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for family coverage, plus a cost growth factor. Lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis and financial sector bailout "I would ask Mitt Romney, if you had been president in 2009 when the economy was collapsing, what would you have done to prevent another Great Depression, besides letting GM go bankrupt?" "How was the repaid TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money used and how should it have been used? Did it pay down debt or go into a slush fund?" Where the candidates stand: As a member of the Senate, Obama voted for the TARP bailout. Romney supported the 2008 financial sector bailout, saying it "was the right action to be taken," citing the need "to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures."  Reuters, Getty Images In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters. Romney has supported parts the Dodd-Frank law which Congress enacted and Obama signed into law in response to the financial crisis, but Romney also said in the first debate that the Dodd-Frank law "has some unintended consequences that are harmful to the economy. One is it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen." Inflation and the cost of living "With the economy in a recession and the working class spending more for gasoline, groceries, and all other products, what will you do in the first 30 days to help lower prices in order for the prices of other goods to come down and would you put that statement in writing tonight and have it as public record for the American public?" Where the candidates stand: In the first debate, Romney did raise the issue of inflation contending that the prices of gasoline food, electricity, and medical care have all increased during Obama's presidency. Obama has not made inflation an issue, focusing instead on improving public education, developing American energy, closing tax loopholes for companies that are locate production overseas, and "closing our deficit in a responsible, balanced way that allows us to invest in our future." Saving and reforming entitlement programs "I am now sixty-four years old and have worked since I was fifteen years old. Both my employers and I have made payments into Social Security and Medicare for all these years. I retired two years ago and an now receiving a reduced benefit because of my early retirement. How can any candidate or party make plans to do away with Social Security and Medicare, when they are not the ones paying for it? If there is going to be a shortage, increase the employee and employer contribution amounts." Where the candidates stand: Obama said in the first debate that "Social Security is structurally sound," but "it's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill" in 1983. That 1983 bill included a tax increase and a reduction in future retirement benefits. In a speech in February, Romney rejected the idea of Social Security tax increases but said "we will slowly raise the (Social Security) retirement age. We will slow the growth in benefits for higher-income retirees." In his fiscal year 2013 budge proposal, Obama calls for requiring higher-income retirees to pay higher premiums for Medicare doctor's visits and prescription drug coverage. He also calls for higher deductibles for Medicare outpatient care and doctor's office visits, starting in 2017, and for requiring new co-payments for Medicare home health care services starting in 2017. He also proposed to give the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a group of independent experts, the power to limit the growth of Medicare spending to the rate of national income growth plus 0.5 percent.  From tramping through cornfields to munching ice cream cones to holding babies – the time-honored traditions of the campaign trail leave President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney looking surprisingly alike. On Medicare, Romney proposes no change for current recipients, but starting in 2023, would people on Medicare to choose among private insurance plans and receive a federal subsidy -- scaled to income to help pay for coverage. He has also said, "We will gradually increase the Medicare eligibility age by one month each year. In the long run, the eligibility ages for both programs (Medicare and Social Security) will be indexed to longevity so that they increase only as fast as life expectancy." Energy "Why isn't all the petroleum product from our domestic drilling and refining kept for domestic consumption? Perhaps a new publicly owned refinery in the northern Plains states could handle the dirty oil from Canada and give us a source of refined product for all our governmental needs. Isn't this a shovel-ready project that would create good long-lasting jobs and put us further down the road of energy independence?" Where the candidates stand: Romney has made increasing domestic energy production one of his central campaign themes, while Obama has claimed credit for increased domestic production of oil and gas during the past four years. But the Environmental Protection Agency this year imposed new clean air rules that limit emissions from coal-fired electric power plants. Obama said in the first debate that he and Romney "both agree that we've got to boost American energy production, and oil and natural gas production are higher than they've been in years. But I also believe that we've got to look at the energy sources of the future, like wind and solar and bio fuels, and make those investments" through federal subsidies for alternative energy firms. Romney said he'd double the number of permits for domestic oil and gas development. He also said to Obama, "I like coal. I'm going to make sure we can continue to burn clean coal. People in the coal industry feel like it's getting crushed by your policies." A Romney spokesman said in August that he would allow the wind credit to expire, "end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits." And finally – expressing the perhaps quixotic desire of many readers for more compromise and bipartisan problem-solving in the nation's capital, these questions: "If you are unsuccessful in winning the election, would you consider taking a position in your opponent's administration with an eye towards helping to foster bipartisanship? If so, what ideas of your opponent would you be most enthusiastic about supporting?" |
FBI: Man stuffs ATMs with fake cash
| By NBCNewYork.com A man accused of stuffing two ATMs in Manhattan with counterfeit cash was arrested Monday afternoon, authorities said. Gene Carlo Pena, 26, was taken into custody at Kennedy Airport around 4 p.m. after voluntarily returning to New York from the Dominican Republic, the FBI said. He worked for a company that serviced the ATMs. He faces several charges, including embezzlement and other charges related to counterfeit currency. It's not clear if he has an attorney. The amateurish fake bills were put in ATMs at two Chase bank branches to replace cash that had been stolen. The bank was short a total of $11,000. The counterfeit bills were blank on one side and authorities believe they were meant to trick the ATM into believing it was carrying a full complement of cash. However, the machines were able to distinguish most of the fake bills from real ones, a bank official said. The NYPD and Secret Service assisted in the investigation. More content from NBCNews.com:
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Shrinking cellphone bill claim may not be accurate
| By Bob Sullivan The cellphone industry trade group issued a report last week saying the average monthly bill is $47. It included a helpful chart showing how far bills have fallen during the past 10 years. Strange, because I don't know anyone who has a $47 bill. Or anyone who's bragging about how much less they are paying now. Inspired by Friday's report by the CTIA, I logged on to websites for the four major carriers in an attempt to find a $47 cellphone plan. As you'll see in a moment, I didn't have much luck. When you finish reading, I hope you'll take a moment to share with others how much you pay for cellphone service, either by leaving a Facebook comment below, or by emailing me at BobSullivan@feedback.msnbc.com. But first, a little more about average monthly bills. You'll find a wide spectrum of figures if you go hunting, because there are so many levels of service -- old flip phones, old smartphones, 4G smartphones that can share bandwidth with tablets and PCs. That makes an "average" not terribly useful. Still, the quest for a two-digit number on the bottom of a monthly bill is real. Here's a little more data. J.D. Power and Associates said the average monthly bill was $71 in 2010, back when smartphone penetration was far south of the 50 percent mark it hit this year. New research the company provided to NBC News on Monday offers a more salient data point on the subject -- the average wireless bill reported by consumers, including family plans, is $111. The Labor Department issued data this month saying Americans spent $1,226 in 2011 on smartphone plans– or more than $100 per month -- up from $1,110 four years earlier. That led to a hand-wringing article in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that consumers are cutting back on other things, like eating out, to pay for cellphones. For perspective, the Labor Department says all consumer spending rose only by $67 during that recessionary span, meaning the rise in cellphone spending accounted for that increase and then some. The CTIA offers a good explanation for its $47 number. Vice President of Research Bob Roche said it represents "average revenue per unit," which is quite different than an average monthly bill. For example, a family with four phones who pays a $200 bill would be paying $50 per unit. He also said the group is considering updated ways to express monthly costs. Still, the trend line produced by the CTIA showing monthly fees shrinking slightly is hard to stomach. It's undeniable that today's phones do much more than ever before, and the service is worth more. Not that long ago, we all waited until 9 p.m. to call friends so we didn't exceed our monthly minutes. Calling prices have plummeted. Meanwhile, we watch live video of sporting events while waiting for the bus. Reliability improvements have also allowed many consumers to turn off their land lines, saving them $40 per month or more. It's insulting, however, to suggest that wireless prices have gone down. Not only have they gone up -- and this is my main area of interest -- they've become much, much more confusing, while regressing suspiciously towards nearly identical prices. Inspired by the CTIA report, I went to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, looking for the least expensive but useful plan I could find. It's important to note that these are just sample findings, pulled for an imaginary consumer in a Seattle suburb. But they are typical. All these firms have adopted a frustrating new model that lowers prices on calls and raises prices on data, often loading up bills with complicated tiers for data usage. The punishment for exceeding your level of data service is severe, nudging people toward overpaying for large-consumption plans as insurance. But even basic "feature" phone plans aren't a picnic. I'll lay out the details below, but here are the CliffsNotes -- a smartphone with a data plan so small you can barely use it costs $80. A smartphone with a good-enough plan costs $110. A usable call-and-text phone costs around $70. Emergency-only phones, when you can find them, are around $40. Verizon's plans require an A+B formula -- a line fee, then a usage fee. For basic phones, the line fee is $30 per month. The least expensive calling plan is an additional $10 monthly, with pay-as-you-go 20-cents-each text messages. Total: $40 plus taxes, texts and fees. So there's one option that's below CTIA's average. Want unlimited talk and text? That'll cost a $40 usage fee, for a $70-plus bill. Verizon's smartphones cost $40 for access, and another $40 for an absolutely minuscule 300 MB per month data plan that's destined for overage charges. Add a modest 4 GB plan, and you're at a $110 price point. Verizon is heavily marketing the fact that data plans can be shared among families and various devices, a "benefit" that can do more harm than good if your kid eats up all your data watching videos on an iPad. Sprint offers a $30 monthly calling-only phone, which covers 200 minutes per month and no texts. For $50, you get 450 minutes and a generous text plan -- but only on select phones. The first flip phone I picked required at least $69 per month -- sound familiar? -- and I only found the cheaper options with a lot of clicking around. Also, in addition to the usual taxes and fees, Sprint charges an administrative fee of "up to" $1.99 per line. Sprint's smartphone pricing comes with slightly different engineering but much the same result. For $80, you get a lot of data but a fairly crippled talking plan -- only 450 minutes, with a 45-cent-per-minute overage penalty. For $110, you get unlimited data and talk. AT&T offers a 450-minute plan for $40 to phone-only users, and $70 for unlimited calling. It's also gone to the shared data model, and its A+B pricing is slightly more confusing. For 1 GB of data, users pay $45 for the line and $40 for data. Again, that's an overage fee waiting to happen. Users who want 4 GB per month pay only $40 for the line and $70 for the data, for a total of $110. Amazing how common that number is. T-Mobile's pricing is a little simpler - no line charges. "Classic unlimited" phone-only plans are $60 per month. Talk-only 500-minute plans are $50. For smartphone users, T-Mobile's $95 monthly plan -- offering 5 GB at top speed, which can be shared with up to 5 devices -- might be the best deal. Getting 10 GB will set you back $125 per month. But all these plans suffer from a fatal flaw, warns Tom Pepe, CEO of Validas, a firm that analyzes cellphone bills for consumers and corporations. Users have absolutely no idea what they are getting when they are buying 2 gigabytes of data per month. With older cellphones, consumers could roughly guess how many 100-minute conversations they might have during a month and predict usage that way. But no one knows how much bandwidth that live baseball playoff game video stream might cost you (what if it goes into extra innings?) This makes it nearly impossible to make sensible plan choices. So as an odd form of insurance, some consumers are buying data plans that far exceed what they really need. "Here's the problem. People are getting oversubscribed. At a gas station you get 10 gallons of gasoline and you use 10 gallons of gasoline. If you don't use it by the end of the month, the gas station doesn't come and take back the gas from you," Pepe said. On the other hand, consumers who discover new video streams or other bandwidth-hogging apps get an ugly surprise at the end of the month. That's good for no one, he said. "There is a cost to that money," he said. "(The carriers) are getting a million calls into their call centers with people complaining." The voice cellphone market reached a tipping point when the prepaid and discount market became a real alternative for average consumers. There are some options for discount smartphone shoppers -- MetroPCS offers a $50 plan for 2.5 GB of data, for example, but availability and phone selection are limited. And MetroPCS is in the midst of being acquired by T-Mobile, making the future of its discount plans hard to predict. Boost, Virgin and TracFone also offer plans, but they are not yet taking a serious bite out of the big four's market share. Meanwhile, the most exciting – and disturbing -- data from the CTIA report was this: Data usage by consumers is exploding, up 104 percent on an annual basis. Consumers uploaded and downloaded 1.16 trillion megabytes of data from July 2011 to June 2012, the report said. How much data is that? CTIA's Roche says it's the equivalent of sending all the books in the Library of Congress across the network eight times an hour, every day of the year. With the most popular carriers adding new tiers of data service all the time -- Verizon offers 12! Really! -- and smartphones quickly driving call-only phones into extinction, Pepe expects the problem to get worse before it gets better. "There's going to be growing pains," he said. "But we are consumers, and we are going to keep consuming. ... It's going to be an interesting time over next 12 months." What size check do you write for wireless service every month? Tell us in comments below, or write to me directly at BobSullivan@feedback.msnbc.com * Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook. More from Red Tape Chronicles:
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