Arias Challenged On Pedophilia Claim

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was challenged today by phone records, text message records, and her own diary entries that appeared to contradict her claim that she caught her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, looking at pictures of naked boys.

Arias had said during her testimony that one afternoon in January 2008, she walked in on Alexander masturbating to pictures of naked boys. She said she fled from the home, threw up, drove around aimlessly, and ignored numerous phone calls from Alexander because she was so upset at what she had seen.

The claim was central to the defense's accusation that Alexander was a "sexual deviant" who grew angry and abusive toward Arias in the months after the incident, culminating in a violent confrontation in June that left Alexander dead.

Arias claimed she killed him in self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Today, prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive in questioning witnesses throughout the trial, volleyed questions at her about the claim of pedophilia, asking her to explain why her and Alexander's cell phone records showed five calls back and forth between the pair throughout the day she allegedly fled in horror. Some of the calls were often initiated Arias, according to phone records.

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She and Alexander also exchanged text messages throughout the afternoon and evening at a time when Arias claims the pedophilia incident occurred. In those messages they discuss logistics of exchanging one another's cars that night. Alexander sends her text messages about the car from a church social event he attended that night that she never mentioned during her testimony.

Arias stuck by her claim that she saw Alexander masturbating to the pictures, and her voice remained steady under increasingly-loud questioning by Martinez.

But Martinez also sparred with Arias on the stand over minor issues, such as when he asked Arias detailed questions about the timing and order of events from that day and Arias said she could not remember them.

"It seems you have problems with your memory. Is this a longstanding thing? Since you started testifying?" Martinez asked.

"No it goes back farther than that. I don't know even know if I'd call it a problem," Arias said.

"How far back does it go? You don't want to call them problems, are they issues? Can we call them issues? When did you start having them?" he asked in rapid succession. "You say you have memory problems, that it depends on the circumstance. Give me the factors that influence that."

"Usually when men like you or Travis are screaming at me," Arias shot back from the stand. "It affects my brain, it makes my brain scramble."

"You're saying it's Mr. Martinez's fault?" Martinez asked, referring to himself in the third person.

"Objection your honor," Arias' attorney finally shouted. "This is a stunt!"

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Martinez dwelled at one point about a journal entry where Arias wrote that she missed the Mormon baptism of her friend Lonnie because she was having kinky sex with Alexander. He drew attention to prior testimony that she and Alexander used Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks candy as sexual props.

"You're trying to get across (in the diary entry) that this involved a sexual liaison with Mr. Alexander right?" he asked. "And you're talking about Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?"

"That happened also that night," Arias said.

"You were there, enjoying it, the Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?" he asked again, prompting a smirk from Arias.

"I enjoyed his attention," Arias said.

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: CERN)

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.

"The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us," Lykken said at AAAS.

Enter the Higgs boson, the particle form of the field that gives mass to several fundamental particles. The Higgs field permeates the vacuum of space, which means the mass of the boson and the stability of the vacuum are closely intertwined. Theory predicted that if the Higgs boson is heavier than about 129 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), the universe should be on safe footing.

But in July 2012 physicists at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland announced that a particle closely matching the Higgs had been found by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The much celebrated particle has a mass of about 126 GeV - light enough to raise fears of instability.

There is still hope for the universe as we know it. Some theorists pointed out that the relationship between the Higgs mass and the vacuum of space depends on the mass of a particle called the top quark. If the top quark's mass is different than we think it is, stability might reign.

There are also anomalies with the Higgs measurement, like the fact that it decays into photons more often than predicted. That hints we may yet find particles from the theory of supersymmetry, which says each ordinary particle has heavier "superpartners". If the Higgs has such a relative, it might save us from destruction. But some of these predicted particles, particularly the superpartners of the top quark, can push the universe back into instability.

The worries may remain unconfirmed for a while. The LHC is shutting down for a two-year break so engineers can prepare the machine to shoot higher-energy particle beams, which are needed to probe for superpartners.

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Oil down in Asian trade

SINGAPORE: Oil prices were down in Asia on Thursday as the dollar strengthened and amid market speculation that Saudi Arabian crude production could increase in the coming months, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, shed 57 cents to $94.65 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April dropped 61 cents to $114.99.

The retreat in oil prices was driven by "prospects of increasing supply out of Saudi Arabia in the coming months," said Sanjeev Gupta, who heads the Asia-Pacific oil and gas practice at Ernst & Young.

Market chatter suggested that Saudi Arabia was planning to increase production to meet rising demand from countries such as China.

An increase in production usually puts a downward pressure on prices.

Another factor was the stronger US dollar, which rose Wednesday after minutes of the latest US Federal Reserve policy meeting were released.

Minutes of the January 29-30 meeting suggested the central bank could begin tightening its monetary policy even before the US labour market picks up.

"Such belief has caused the dollar to rally against the euro, making commodities less desirable," Phillip Futures said in a market commentary.

- AFP/ck

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Woman's corpse found in LA hotel's water tank

By Alan Duke, CNN

updated 8:51 PM EST, Wed February 20, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Elisa Lam disappeared from the hotel on January 31


• Canadian's body was found in a Cecil Hotel water tank Tuesday


• Police investigating death

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Tourists staying at a Los Angeles hotel bathed, brushed teeth and drank with water from a tank in which a young woman's body was likely decomposing for more than two weeks, police said.

Elisa Lam's corpse was found in the Cecil Hotel's rooftop water tank by a maintenance worker who was trying to figure out why the water pressure was low Tuesday.

Lam's parents reported her missing in early February. The last sighting of her was in the hotel on January 31, Los Angeles Police said.

Detectives are now investigating the 21-year-old Canadian's suspicious death, police Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.

It was not clear whether the water presented any health risks. Results on tests on the water done Wednesday by the Los Angeles Public Health Department were expected later in the day.

The hotel management has not responded to CNN requests for comment.

Video appears to show four cisterns on the hotel roof.

People who stayed at the Cecil since Lam's disappearance expressed shock about developments.

"The water did have a funny taste," Sabrina Baugh told CNN on Wednesday. She and her husband used the water for eight days.

"We never thought anything of it," the British woman said. "We thought it was just the way it was here."

What she described was not normal.

"The shower was awful," she said. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."

The hotel remained open after the discovery, but guests checking in Tuesday were told not to drink it, according to Qui Nguyen, who decided to find a new hotel Wednesday.

Nguyen said he learned about the body from a CNN reporter, not the hotel staff.

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CNN's Kyung Lah and Irving Last contributed to this report.

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Newtown Shooter Had Sensory Processing Disorder

From the time he was little, Adam Lanza couldn't bear to be touched. By middle school, the chaos and noise of large, bustling classrooms began to upset him. At 20, just before the Newtown shootings, he was isolated and, the world would later learn, disturbed.

All this was revealed in "Raising Adam Lanza," an investigative report by the Hartford Courant in partnership with the PBS news program FRONTLINE, which aired Tuesday night.

Before the age of 6, Lanza had been diagnosed with a controversial condition, "sensory integration disorder" -- now known as sensory processing disorder, according to the report.

Those with sensory processing disorder or SPD may over-respond to stimuli and find clothing, physical contact, light, sound or food unbearable. They may also under-respond and feel little or no reaction to pain or extreme hot and cold. A third form involves sensory motor problems that can cause weakness and clumsiness or delay in developing motor skills.

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Whether SPD is a distinct disorder or a collection of symptoms pointing to other neurological deficits, most often anxiety or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has been debated by the medical community for more than two decades.

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No one will know why the withdrawn Lanza shot his mother four times in her own bed, then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School to slaughter six women and 20 first-graders before taking his own life on Dec. 14, 2012.

But this report, the most detailed account to date on his troubled life, paints a picture of a child coping with special needs and a mother, "devoted but perhaps misguided," struggling unsuccessfully to help.

"The most surprising thing for me was this sort of inwardness of Adam, a world view of someone that was afraid of the world," said show producer Frank Koughan. "He just reacted badly to the whole world and didn't want to be part of it. He was not some violent monster, except on one particular day, when he was exceedingly monstrous."

The investigative team interviewed family and friends of the shooter's parents, Nancy and Peter Lanza, and reviewed a decade's worth of messages and emails from his mother to close friends, describing her son's socially awkward behavior.

"Adam was a quiet kid. He never said a word," Marvin LaFontaine, a friend of Nancy Lanza, told them. "There was a weirdness about him and Nancy warned me once at one of the Scout meetings … 'Don't touch Adam.' She said he just can't stand that. He'd become teary-eyed and I think he would run to his mother."

In 1998, the Lanzas left their home in New Hampshire for Connecticut with Adam, who had already been diagnosed with the sensory disorder and was "coded" with an individual education plan, according to a family member who did not want to be identified by FRONTLINE.

"It was somebody well-placed who was completely in a position to know," said Koughan, 45, a veteran journalist who produced the film, "Drop-Out Nation."

Lanza didn't recognize pain, another feature of some types of SPD. He couldn't cope with loud noise, confusion or change, which would cause him to "shut down," according to the report.

"He'd almost go into a catatonic kind of state, which is another reason why in hindsight, he didn't seem like a threat to anybody," said Koughan. "He didn't lash out or beat up kids. He went within himself, until one day he didn't."

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Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

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Ubisoft sells rivals' games in online shop

SAN FRANCISCO: French videogame maker Ubisoft began selling computer games made by Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers and other rivals at its online Uplay shop.

California-based Electronic Arts, in turn, added Ubisoft hits including "Assassin's Creed III" and "Far Cry 3" to its Origin network for play as the companies ramped up their challenge to Valve Corporation's Steam service.

Third-party computer games available for download from the Uplay shop include a game-of-the-year edition of "Batman: Arkham City" and "Crysis 3," according to Ubisoft.

"We're thrilled to be bringing EA titles to Uplay and Ubisoft titles to Origin -- the more choice for consumers, the better in today's gaming world," said Origin vice president of production Michael Blank.

"Offering games like Dead Space 3, Need for Speed Most Wanted and more on Uplay is a great opportunity to reach even more PC gamers worldwide."

Uplay is an online gaming community boasting 50 million members who access the service from videogame consoles, mobile gadgets, or personal computers.

"Adding excellent titles from EA, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and many other top developers to Uplay shop means that players now have more choice in where and how they purchase games online," said Ubisoft vice president of digital publishing Chris Early.

Origin reports having nearly 40 million users who sign on to play or buy games using computers powered by Windows or Macintosh software, or iPhones, iPads or iPod touch devices.

At the start of this year, Steam network for game software and online play was reported to have more than 54 million active users and laid claim to the lion's share of the videogame digital distribution market.

- AFP/sf

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Killing, carjacking spree ends with suicide

A man, believed to be the shooter, lies dead in the street near an Orange County Sheriff's vehicle in Villa Park, California.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Ali Syed killed three, wounded three during spree that involved carjackings in Orange County, police say


• Authorities: Syed first killed woman at his parents' home, then shot at motorists


• Suspect killed himself after police spotted him north of Tustin, police say

(CNN) -- In the middle of a shooting spree that killed three people and unleashed terror on Southern California motorists Tuesday morning, Ali Syed told one of his carjacking victims to walk away, police say.

"Mr. Syed ... said, 'I don't want to hurt you, I killed somebody. Today's my last day. Give me your keys,' " Tustin Police Chief Scott Jordan told reporters.

According to preliminary accounts from police, Syed, 20, didn't intentionally spare another target.

Police say they believe Syed, a part-time college student, fatally shot a woman at his family's Ladera Ranch home before killing two other people -- including a senior citizen executed outside his vehicle -- and wounding three others as he fired a shotgun at Orange County motorists on the Costa Mesa Freeway and committed three carjackings.

The spree ended when Syed died after he turned his gun on himself as police approached on a road north of Tustin, authorities say.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department says it was called to the Ladera Ranch home, where Syed lived with his parents, on a report of shots fired about 4:45 a.m. PT.

A woman in her 20s was found dead there. Police said she wasn't related to Syed, but they didn't release her name, and they said they didn't know why she was at the home.

Syed left the home in his parents' SUV, police said. About 25 minutes after that police call and 20 miles to the northwest, Syed drove into a Denny's and Big Lots parking lot in Tustin, exited the vehicle and shot a driver in the back of the head, Jordan said.

The wounded motorist -- a man who was waiting for his son to carpool with him to work -- managed to drive away before stopping near an overpass, Jordan said. The victim was being treated Tuesday, police said.

That's when Syed, whose SUV had a flat tire, approached the man he would spare. Syed ran toward the man at a nearby gas station, took his keys and drove the pickup truck away without firing at him, Jordan said.

Syed then drove south on the Costa Mesa Freeway, exited onto a transition road, got out of the vehicle and fired a shotgun at southbound vehicles on the freeway, hitting three vehicles, police said.

One of the freeway drivers was wounded in the hand and face, but investigators don't know whether the wounds were from shotgun rounds or debris, according to Jordan.

Police said Syed then drove to nearby Santa Ana, crashing the pickup into a curb on a freeway off-ramp. There, he pointed the shotgun at Melvin L. Edwards, 69, of Laguna Hills, who was in a BMW at a stop sign.

"Syed ... got (Edwards) out of the car at gunpoint, walked him across the road and executed him -- shot him three times," Jordan said.

Syed drove Edwards' BMW to the parking lot of a Tustin-area Micro Center computer store, where police said he found his next two shooting victims.

Syed shot and killed Jeremy Lewis, 26, of Fullerton, who was in a vehicle in the lot, police said. Lewis had worked at a construction site across the street.

People from the construction site then approached, and Syed shot and wounded one of them in the arm, Jordan said. Syed entered that person's vehicle and drove north on the Costa Mesa Freeway before exiting again.

By that time, authorities had received many phone calls about the shootings, and California Highway Patrol officers found Syed driving at an intersection about 5 miles north of Tustin, Jordan said.

Syed exited the vehicle as it slowly rolled near the intersection, according to police.

"There really wasn't a confrontation at that very end," Jordan said. "As soon as he got out of his vehicle, before it actually came to a complete stop, he shot and killed himself," Jordan said.

Syed was unemployed and taking one class at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, an Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman said.

Police said they're trying to determine what led to the shootings, and that they didn't yet know of a motive.

CNN's John Fricke contributed to this report.

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What's next in the looming budget crisis?

(CBS News) WASHINGTON -- We are nine days from the next national self-inflicted budget crisis: big, across-the-board cuts in the federal budget will hit automatically on March 1. The cuts are designed to be so deep and damaging that they would force the president and Congress to compromise on a better way.

"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," President Barack Obama said Tuesday. "This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again."

Watch: Obama warns of the dangers of the "sequester," below.

Obama wants more tax revenue, but Republicans say no. Both sides say it's up to the other to give in.

There will be a continued effort by the White House to apply public pressure on Republicans to relent. This will be done in public, in events such as Obama's speech Tuesday; it's already been done privately.

Top government officials are warning businesses they could be harmed by these looming spending cuts. For example, last Friday, top officials at the Agriculture Department warned meat and poultry producers that there might not be enough federal inspectors to keep their processing plants open and operating.

These are designed to motivate businesses to plead with Republicans to find another way. For now, Republicans appear prepared to take these spending cuts, because they say they will argue to the public they're more serious about deficit reduction than President Obama.

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There are currently no behind-the-scenes negotiations between the White House and Republicans. Republicans say this is President Obama's problem and that he needs to solve it with new spending cuts, because they refuse to raise taxes again this year.

As for talks, the top aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor joked Tuesday that President Obama has spent more time playing golf with Tiger Woods than he has negotiating with congressional Republicans.

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Arias Says Violent Sex Preceded Killing

Jodi Arias and her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander,, had increasingly violent sex in which he tied her to his bed, twisted her arm, bent her over a desk for anal sex, and made sex videos with her in the hours leading up to the stabbing and shooting frenzy that left Alexander dead.

It was a day in which Arias, 32, inched closer to telling the court how the killing of Alexander took place, but after several hours of increasingly emotional testimony the court was adjourned until Wednesday.

In her sixth day on the stand, Arias tearfully described the sex-filled hours that led to Alexander's death on June 4, 2008. She is charged with murder for killing her former boyfriend, but claims she was forced to kill him self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

"He tied me up, (on) the bed. It's not my favorite but it's not unbearable," Arias told the court.

She said he used a kitchen knife in the bathroom to cut the rope to the proper length, but she didn't remember whether he left the knife in the bathroom or brought it back to the nightstand in the bedroom.

"There are a lot gaps that day... a lot of things I don't remember that day," she said.

Arias and Alexander then took graphic sexual photos of one another and made a sex video, both of which Arias said were Alexander's ideas. Arias has girlish braids in the pictures.

But the mood of the afternoon turned, she said, when Alexander became angry over a scratched computer disk of photos she gave him. He threw the CD and Arias said she became "apprehensive" of his rising temper.

"I know he's getting angry because Napoleon [Alexander's dog] got up and left the room and he always leaves the room when he gets mad." she testified.

"I don't know that I was consciously thinking (of violence) but I was more tense. I stood up, went to walk over to him, to rub his back and make sure he was okay," she said. "But he grabbed me on the upper arms, spun me around and grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back, and bent me over the desk, and pressed up against me."

Charlie Leight/Pool/The Arizona Republic/AP Photo

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"I was scared he was going to throw me or something, kick me," she continued. "He pressed his groin up against my butt, did a few thrusts and then started pulling my pants down."

The pair then had anal sex, which Arias said pacified Alexander.

"I was very relieved. I felt like we had avoided catastrophe. It could have led to another fight," she said.

Instead of a fight, Alexander, who was 27 and a devout Mormon, and Arias decide to go upstairs and take more nude photos of one another. Arias said she hoped the photos would satisfy Alexander over his frustration with the scratched CD.

Evidence introduced earlier in the trial show that Alexander was killed while Arias was photographing Alexander in the shower.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Earlier, Arias explained that she wasn't planning to visit Alexander during her roadtrip from her home in California, but was convinced by him to spontaneously take a detour to his house for sex and to hang out.

"The very last time I called Travis it was kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, he had been very sweet and was guilting me and making me feel bad that I was taking this big trip without going to see him," Arias said this afternoon.

"When I called him last time it was just like all right, I'm going," she said. "(Sex) was our thing at that time. I wasn't going to go there, stay the night and not do that."

Arias' attorney, Kirk Nurmi, asked her repeatedly on the stand if Arias brought a gun or knife with her on the roadtrip and to Alexander's house. She said that she did not.

She also denied a series of allegations made by the prosecution that she dyed her hair, rented an inconspicuous car, borrowed gas cans, turned off her cell phone, and switched money around her bank accounts as she left for Alexander's house because she was planning to murder him when she got there.

Arias said that her hair remained the same color, auburn-brown, throughout May and June, that she rented a car because her own car was not stable enough for highway travel, that she requested a white car instead of a red one because police pull red ones over more often, and that she transferred money to a business banking account for a tax write-off to classify it as a business trip.

The testimony about the road trip and Arias' planning could be key to the jury as they decide whether the killing was pre-meditated, as the prosecution claims. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted of murder with aggravating factors such as pre-meditation.

Arias said that she "didn't sleep at all last night" before testifying about the dramatic incident today. Her comment was stricken from the record.

Arias also described a barrage of threatening text messages sent by Alexander in which he told her he would exact "revenge" on her soon and called her a "sociopath."

She told the court that Alexander's temper would make her "cower."

The messages show a growing discord between the pair in April 2008, less than two months before Arias killed Alexander.

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