Yogurts With More Sugar Than A Twinkie

We all like to think of yogurt as a healthy breakfast, but as it turns out, many of the most popular yogurt brands have more sugar than a junk food you'd never consider eating.



The American Heart Association recommends that men eat no more than 36 grams of sugar per day, and women no more than 20. One Twinkie makes a big dent in that recommended daily max, packing 19 grams of the sweet stuff, Time reported. Many of the top-selling yogurts have even more.

Part of this high sugar count is due to sugar that occurs naturally in yogurt, but the amount of natural sugar varies dramatically, depending on the kind. Lowfat yogurt, for example, is notorious for being high in sugar, Monica Reinagel, M.S., LDN, CNS tells The Huffington Post. The first 17 grams of sugar per serving, in lowfat varieties, is naturally occurring lactose. In original yogurt, it's common to see anywhere between 12 and 15 grams of natural sugar, according to Heather Bauer, R.D., CDN. That's why Bauer recommends going Greek. Greek yogurt, she said, has as little as 6 grams in plain flavors.

What really ups the sugar, though, is what we put into that plain yogurt. Fruit, especially the syrupy kind mixed into store-bought yogurts, is a common culprit. Plus, once you start throwing in candied nuts or sweetened granola, you've can quickly find yourself well beyond the sugar content of an entire Twinkie. "If you're going to add toppings, always stick to a plain flavor," Bauer says.

But many would-be yogurt eaters will tell you they just don't care for the bitter taste of a plain scoop. To make it more palatable, nearly all big brands, like Yoplait and Dannon, offer a large selection of fruit- and sometimes even dessert-flavored options. It's often these sweet additions that give the yogurts like the five below more sugar than a Twinkie.

Strawberry-flavored original Yoplait yogurt, despite being 99 percent fat free, packs 26 grams of sugar per 6-ounce container.

 This blueberry offering from Dannon is proof that you should always check nutrition labels -- or you could end up with 24 grams of sugar per 6-ounce serving.

 This vanilla pick from Stonyfield clocks in at 29 grams of sugar per 8-ounce serving.

 Brown Cow's nonfat vanilla has 25 grams of sugar per 6-ounce container.

 Activia walks a fine line with 19 grams of sugar per 4.4-ounce container of the blueberry flavor. That's as much as a Twinkie, in a smaller-than-average serving size.

Source 

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Self-Driving Cars Will Turn Surveillance Woes Into a Mainstream Worry

In the aftermath of the NSA spying revelations, our society is struggling to equip itself with the laws and public understanding necessary to deal with the spread of technology into every corner of our lives.

Self-driving cars are one place we can start to get it right. They provide yet another example of the challenges to autonomy and freedom brought by technology, and have the potential to bring the debate home for people who don’t feel as concerned by privacy issues related to email and laptops.

On Tuesday, Google unveiled a proper self-driving car, with no steering wheel, no brakes, no pedals. Google expects these no-hands-on-wheel cars to hit the roads in 2017 and it is up to us to craft the laws and policies that will govern their use. Such decisions cannot be left for tomorrow. As Google’s working prototype reveals, the robocars of the future are here. And because people have a long history of projecting personal freedom and autonomy onto automobiles, they will have an innate understanding of the stakes.

Case in Point: The Computer Parked in My Grandmother’s Garage

Grandmother is an inspiring, smart, and fiercely independent 80-year-old woman. Recently, she mailed me a folded up New York Times article entitled “Close the N.S.A.’s Back Doors.” I called her, eager to know why she suddenly cared about backdoors. We often have passionate political conversations, and I have tried many times to drag her into discussing the Snowden leaks and their consequences to no avail. She explained she had happened to see “N.S.A” in the article title, and knowing it might interest me, slipped it in the letter she had just finished writing. Was she concerned about NSA back doors, I asked? No.

Her lack of understanding and concern can be blamed on at least two things: poor metaphors and a narrow view of computing. For non-techies, a “back door” is not a very helpful metaphor. Technically, a back door is a method used to bypass the normal authentication process to secretly and remotely access computers. In the New York Times article, the term is mainly used in its broader sense, “to describe a range of policies and practices whereby governments compel, or otherwise get the cooperation of, private sector companies to provide access to data they control.”

“So someone could access your computer without you seeing it, like if someone entered by the backdoor when you were watching the front door,” I tried to explain to my grandmother. “Nonsense,” she told me, “if there was a backdoor in my house, I would see it. It’s my house after all–the thing you’re describing rather sounds to me like someone having a spare key of my house without me knowing it.”

A back door, indeed, is a programmer-centric metaphor: from inside the code, you can tell there are different ways to get in. It’s not a user-centric metaphor: by definition, from outside the code, the user can’t see it. That makes it challenging to discuss.

This brings us to the second problem: a narrow view of computing. Grandmother owns a desktop computer she uses once a year. It sits in a corner far from her daily life. Miss Teen America fears people activating her camera remotely on her laptop to take naked pictures of her: grandmother doesn’t. Nor does she own a smartphone that could make her worried about remote access and GPS tracking. For people who envision their personal computers as crucial means of empowerment, freedom and autonomy—most of my hacker friends for instance—back doors are a fundamental source of vexation. Grandmother is not one of them. She isn’t as emotionally invested in these tools so potential vulnerabilities to them do not threaten her way of life. And she is not alone. This is sometimes the case even for people whose opinion on the topic matters supremely: in 2013 for instance, Justice Elena Kagan revealed that eight out of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices don’t use email at all.

However, in my grandmother’s daily life, there is a computer that is filled with software, that is connected to the network–therefore potentially remotely accessible–and that she does consider to be the single most important source of her personal autonomy. She just doesn’t think of it as a computer, because it is her car. As many of the cars on the market and on the roads these days, it is packed with driving assistance software and a little antenna on its roof. Her car, literally, is also a computer.

Grandmother never told me: “You have to learn software programming, it is how people become independent, autonomous, and take control of their lives in the 21st  century.” Instead, she spent a great deal of time forcing me to take driving lessons, “because this is how a woman gets her independence, control, autonomy and freedom in life.” I still don’t have my driver’s license and she is very mad at me for it. Growing up, she had me read Françoise Sagan’s novels, and we would watch Thelma and Louise together. She is French but she shared this very American wisdom with me: the automobile will set you free.

It’s quite clear: for most people, the link between government surveillance and freedom is more plainly understood by cars, rather than personal computers. As more and more objects become connected to the Internet these questions will grow in importance.And cars in particular might become, as Ryan Calo puts it in a 2011 article on drones, “a privacy catalyst”; an object giving us an opportunity to drag our privacy laws into the 21st century; an object that restores our mental model of what a privacy violation is.

When my grandmother starts to consider technologically-enabled constraints on how she can drive; or people knowing exactly where she can go—abstract issues of “autonomy” and “privacy” become much more real.

She started looking more into it. Typing ‘Privacy’ and ‘Cars’ in a search engine, she quickly found Ford Global Vice President of Marketing Jim Farley’s declaration at the Consumer Electronics Show: “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing.” In her head, she started re-writing Thelma and Louise in an age of self-driving cars with remote government access for law enforcement purposes. Surely the girls would have been located and arrested, or their cars remotely stopped. “Well, that would make it a ten-minute movie, a YouTube videoclip?,” she joked. Farley’s statement stirred a bit of a public debate, with Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota questioning Ford about its data policies, Farley retracting his statement, competition positioning themselves on the subject and Ford CEO Alan Mulally calling for boundaries and guidelines to operate in this space.

Now, grandmother understands and cares about this issue. And that is important because in order for our society to shape the rules that will make the future of self-driving cars one in which we want to live, we need all members of society to contribute to the conversation.

We need to ask: what happens when cars become increasingly like computers? With self-driving cars, are we getting the best of the computer industry and the car industry, or the worst of both worlds?

“Self-driving” is another misnomer. Driving decisions are never “self-made.” They are accounted for by algorithms when they are not accounted for by drivers. These algorithms reflect many decisions that aren’t self-made either: they are the conscious answers to complicated safety, ethical, legal and commercial dilemmas. Calling a robotic car “self-driving” diverts attention from the surrender of autonomy to algorithms, making it harder to navigate the policy questions that arise.

Self-driving cars are coming–slowly and progressively, with various stages of automation before the streets are filled with no-hand-on-wheel vehicles like the prototype Google revealed Tuesday–but they are surely part of our near future. They hold considerable promise for the environment and for road safety.

They also embody our debate on freedom, autonomy, and privacy when it comes to computing systems–revealing just how intrusive remote access to computing systems by the government or individuals can become.

When grandmother starts to consider technologically-enabled constraints on how she can drive; or people knowing exactly where she can go—abstract issues of “autonomy” and “privacy” become much more real.

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US Airways Cross-country flight diverted after dog poops

A cross-country fight had to make an unscheduled landing when a service dog pooped twice in the aisle, sickening passengers with the odor.

US Airways spokesman Andrew Christie said the May 28 US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia had to make an unscheduled stop in Kansas City,

Christie called the episode a "rare and unfortunate situation." The flight continued after the mess was cleaned up on the ground. The passenger and service dog were rebooked on another flight.

Jim Kutsch, president at The Seeing Eye guide dog school in Morristown, New Jersey, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that such incidents are rare, but that dogs occasionally get sick on planes, too.

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Toddler badly burned by police device during Georgia drug raid

Habersham County :_ A 19-month-old boy was fighting for his life at an Atlanta hospital on Friday after being severely burned by a "flash bang" grenade police tossed into the house to distract a drug suspect during a raid, police said.

The toddler was injured early on Wednesday when the device landed in the playpen where the child was sleeping, said Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell.

An undercover officer had purchased methamphetamine from a man who lived in the house, and police returned to arrest him in a “no-knock” raid, Terrell said. The suspect had previously been arrested on weapons charges, according to the sheriff.


Officers used a battering ram to open the home's locked door,Terrell said.

“They opened it up just enough to get the flash bang in,” said the sheriff. Terrell called the incident “devastating” but unavoidable, as officers did not know the crib was in front of the door.

“All the information we had was that there were no children in the house,” he said. “All you can do is pray for the child, pray for the family, pray for the officers."

The toddler was treated by medics at the scene and then taken to an Atlanta hospital where he was placed in a medically induced coma, the sheriff said. Hospital officials would not release any information on Friday about his condition.

The drug suspect, a relative of the child, was not in the house during the raid but later was arrested nearby, Terrell said.

The boy's parents told local media it could be weeks before they know if he will survive and what treatment he will need.

“He's only a baby, he didn't deserve any of this," the toddler’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told Atlanta television station WSB.

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State orders users to stop pumping from streams

For the first time in nearly 40 years, drought-stricken California has ordered more than 2,600 water agencies and users in the Sacramento Valley to stop pumping water from streams.

A car sits in dried and cracked earth of what was the bottom of the Almaden Reservoir on January 28, 2014 in San Jose, California.

The Sacramento Bee reports Friday that the State Water Resources Control Board imposed the curtailment notice this week.

The notice affects water agencies, farms, cities and other property owners with so-called "junior" water rights, or those issued by the state after 1914. It extends to the Sacramento River and its many tributaries.

Major urban water providers such as the city of Sacramento are included, though most of the affected users are farmers and large irrigation districts.

The newspaper reports water cuts on this scale have not been ordered in California since the drought of 1977.

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Obama says press secretary Jay Carney resigning

President Barack Obama disclosed he's losing his chief spokesman on the same day that the president came to the White House briefing room to personally announce the resignation of his Veterans Affairs secretary.

This May 19, 2014 file photo shows White House Press Secretary Jay Carney listens during his daily news briefing at the White House in Washington. Carney is leaving his post and his No. 2 is taking over.

It was a Friday not quite like any other recently.

Press secretary Jay Carney had a surprise visitor to his daily news briefing, which began not long after Obama's visit there to discuss Secretary Eric Shinseki's departure.

Standing next to Carney in the crowded room, Obama said it was "bittersweet" to see his friend step down after three and a half years on the podium.

At the same time, Obama announced that Josh Earnest, currently principal deputy press secretary, would be taking over.

Carney said the transition will be complete around mid-June, but that Earnest will take his place traveling next week on a trip that Obama has scheduled to Europe.

Carney brought rare but practical experience to the job as a former reporter who once covered the White House for Time magazine. He left journalism to join the White House as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden, and subsequently moved over to serve as Obama's press secretary in 2011.

"He comes to this place with a reporter's perspective," Obama told reporters after interrupting Carney mid-sentence at the beginning of Carney's daily news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room. "That's why, believe it or not, I think he will miss hanging out with you."

A key component of a White House press secretary's job is to regularly joust with reporters in an intense question-and-answer session.

Obama said that Carney had demonstrated good judgment and temperament and said he will continue to rely on his advice from outside the West Wing. The two men embraced before Obama made his exit.

Obama said he is putting the "flak jacket" for dealing with the press on another friend in Earnest, who has worked with Obama since he was his communications director for the Iowa caucuses in the 2008 campaign.

The affable Earnest is well-liked within the White House press corps, and reporters applauded the announcement.

"As you know, his name describes his demeanor," Obama said. "Josh is an earnest guy and you can't find just a nicer individual even outside of Washington."

Obama also teased Earnest for being the "golden voice and dulcet tones" that narrates West Wing Week, the weekly recap of White House events on YouTube.

The president said Carney plans to take the summer off before getting a new job.

Carney said he's made no decision yet on his next step, but is excited about some of the possibilities he's begun to explore. He ruled out rumors that he would serve as ambassador to Russia, after having covered the collapse of the Soviet Empire for Time, saying his wife and two children wouldn't welcome such a move.

Carney expressed his appreciation for working at the White House for five years, even though he says being press secretary is not easy.

"It's an important interaction that takes place here," Carney said. "It's not always pretty. It could certainly be better. But to be a part of it is an honor and a joy for me. And no matter how tough the briefing is, I walk out of here having been glad to stand here."

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1 dead, 1 injured in New Jersey floor collapse

A fire official says a collapse in the basement of a northern New Jersey restaurant has killed one construction worker and injured another.

Emergency crews are on the scene at Coda Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood.

Deputy Fire Chief Joseph tells News 12 New Jersey that it's not clear what the workers were doing when the floor above the basement apparently collapsed Friday morning.

Callaghan says the injured worker is in serious condition. A third worker escaped injury.

Authorities are on the scene of a possible partial building collapse on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood.

Information from: News 12, http://www.news12.com

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US border agency releases report on use of force

The U.S. Border Patrol's parent agency has released a critical report that it commissioned amid complaints that agents used excessive force, a step that the new commissioner says is part of a commitment to transparency.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent looks into Tijuana, Mexico, from the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near San Diego, California.

The report by the Police Executive Research Forum that was released Friday says some agents are suspected of intentionally placing themselves in the escape route of assailants in fleeing vehicles before firing guns. It also says some shootings of rock throwers were questionable, especially when the attackers were hurling projectiles from across the border in Mexico.

The report was released with revised guidelines on use of force.

The Customs and Border Protection agency steadfastly resisted calls from members of Congress and immigration activists to release the report after it was completed in February 2013.

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Central American migrants in Texas flown to Arizona and released

Authorities flew 400 people suspected of entering the United States illegally to Arizona over the weekend and released them at bus stops because detention facilities were full after a surge in migrants, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Migrants, consisting of mostly women and children, disembark from a U.S. ICE bus at a Greyhound bus station in Phoenix.

Over the past month, detention facilities in Texas overflowed with migrants for the first time as a large influx of Central Americans crossed the border into the Rio Grande Valley, said Andy Adame, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in Tucson, Arizona.

“We have enough manpower, it’s due to detention space,” Adame said in explaining why the immigrants, mostly families with young children, were sent to Arizona.

Many Republicans in Congress and some state lawmakers say the federal government is not doing enough to secure the U.S. southern border, while a number of groups push for policy reform to allow the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country to obtain a pathway to U.S. citizenship.

Many people who cross the border illegally from Mexico are quickly returned by the U.S. Border Patrol, but those from Central America and other regions are supposed to be transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so they can be flown home.

The 400 migrants who crossed into Texas were transferred into the custody of ICE and released, dropped off at bus stops in Tucson and Phoenix, according to that agency.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the migrants will be required to report within 15 days to an agency office near where they were dropped off, and their cases will then be handled based on immigration enforcement priorities.

Federal officials under President Barack Obama have focused their immigration enforcement priorities on turning back unauthorized immigrants stopped in border regions and deporting others outside of those areas who are convicted of crimes.

On Tuesday, Obama asked his administration to hold off on making changes to deportation policy until the end of the summer in order to allow Congress time to pass immigration legislation.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for restrictions on immigration, said the released migrants will likely slip away and avoid deportation if they do not commit any crime.

"Essentially, they have gotten successfully into the country and it's unlikely that they're going to leave,” Mehlman said.

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New Mexico:Cook licked sandwiches,served officers

A cook at a New Mexico facility that trains state corrections employees faces battery charges after authorities say she secretly licked sandwiches then served them to probation and parole officers.

Yolanda Arguello 

KOAT-TV reports (http://goo.gl/MCnk5i) Yolanda Arguello (ar-GWAY'-oh) was charged this week following witness interviews into the bizarre allegations at the South Valley New Mexico Women's Recovery Academy in Albuquerque.

According to a criminal complaint, witnesses told investigators that the 59-year-old would take a piece of cheese, lick it and put it on sandwiches at the academy. Another witness told authorities Arguello was seen sucking on an ice cube and putting it back into a cup before handing it to a staff member.

She is charged with three counts of battery on a peace officer.

A phone listing for Arguello was disconnected, and it was unknown if she had an attorney.

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The next chapter in the Snowden leaks may unfold in a New York museum

Over the past year, the secret US government documents that Edward Snowden disclosed have been cascading through the pages of newspapers and magazines around the world.

The NSA has surveillance down to an art form, but Laura Poitras is actually turning it into one.

In the spring of 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City plans an exhibition on the American filmmaker Laura Poitras, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for her central role in bringing the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs to light.

Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist at the Guardian, flew to Hong Kong in June 2013 to meet with Snowden, who gave them the thousands of classified documents that would become the heart of the biggest national-security story in a generation.

Until now, Poitras’s journalism has taken a fairly straightforward, narrative form, appearing as documentary films and news articles. The Whitney show will use the same source material but use it to create “an installation of immersive environments,” according to a release from the museum.

“It will be a chance for her to make a site-specific, environmental exhibition format that will look at some of these issues, and materials and media that she’s gathered over the years, and try to frame them and display them in a different way,” the show’s curator, Jay Sanders, told me.

 “And it will take advantage of the durational and spatial context of a museum to get at how surveillance affects us physiologically, socially, mentally; how information moves.”

Sanders can’t say exactly what shape the exhibition will take—mostly because it hasn’t been worked out yet, as Poitras is busy editing a still-untitled documentary on NSA surveillance, the third film in her post-9/11 trilogy. But he suggests looking to her work for the 2012 Whitney Biennial (which he co-curated) as a template.

There, Poitras held a “surveillance teach-in,” using unconventional tactics to get the audience to grasp what she calls “the contemporary Panopticon.” While William Binney (paywall), a previous NSA whistleblower, and Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher and hacker, spoke on a panel, a security company Poitras had hired frisked museum visitors and detained some of them temporarily.

“She thinks about these things, the totality of how you can tell people things in different ways, and how you can use art in relation to content and political information,” Sanders says.

With Snowden’s revelations still making headlines, it was a no-brainer for the Whitney to invite Poitras to stage an exhibition for the museum’s first year at its new location.

“People are really wondering, what are the possible ways that art and politics can connect?” Sanders says. “She’s an artist who explores that in a deep, meaningful way.

There was an urgency to doing something with her.”

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Casey Kasem's daughter granted visitation

A Washington state judge has ordered that a daughter of ailing radio personality Casey Kasem be allowed to visit him.

Radio personality Casey Kasem and his wife Jean Kasem ride in the 2007 Hollywood's Santa Parade on November 25, 2007, in Hollywood, California.

The ruling Friday was the latest twist in an ongoing dispute between Kasem's wife, Jean, and her stepdaughter, Kerri Kasem over the care of her father.

Kerri Kasem has said in court filings that her father suffers from a form of dementia.

In Kitsap County Superior Court Friday, she said her father was suffering from bedsores along with lung and bladder infections.

Under the ruling, Kerri Kasem will be allowed daily visits for up to an hour and can have her father examined by a doctor.

The 82-year-old Casey Kasem has been staying with family friends west of Seattle.

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Bret Michaels suffers medical emergency at concert

Singer Bret Michaels has abruptly ended a concert in New Hampshire after suffering a medical emergency.

In this April 9, 2008 file photo, Poison lead singer Bret Michaels poses for a portrait in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Michaels has abruptly ended a concert in New Hampshire on Thursday May 29, 2014 after suffering a medical emergency.

Guitarist Pete Evick says on Michaels' Facebook page that Michaels was three songs into his set in Manchester on Thursday when he rushed from the stage. A crew member reported that the former Poison lead singer's blood sugar was extremely low. Michaels was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child.

Evick says Michaels returned to the stage, telling fans he couldn't continue. Evick says when he went to the band's bus to check on Michaels, "he could barely speak, but begged me to apologize to the fans."

Michaels thanked the paramedics on Twitter and Facebook who provided assistance.

Michaels won the 2010 "Celebrity Apprentice," raising money for the American Diabetes Association.

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Shelly Sterling agrees to sell Clippers to Ballmer

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has agreed to buy the Los Angeles Clippers for a record-breaking $2 billion. Now it's up to others whether the deal goes through.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, left, greets former NBA players Bill Russell, right, and "Downtown" Freddie Brown, second right, during an NCAA college basketball game between Washington and Oregon State in Seattle, Wash., on Jan. 25, 2014.

Shelly Sterling said in a statement issued late Thursday that she'd signed a binding contract for a sale of the Clippers by The Sterling Family Trust to Ballmer in what would be a record deal if approved by the NBA.

Ballmer "will be a terrific owner," Sterling said, "We have worked for 33 years to build the Clippers into a premier NBA franchise. I am confident that Steve will take the team to new levels of success."

Sterling negotiated the sale after her husband, Donald Sterling, made racist remarks that were made public. The remarks included Sterling telling girlfriend V. Stiviano not to bring blacks to Clippers games, specifically mentioning Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.

Shelly Sterling's statement noted that she made the deal "under her authority as the sole trustee of The Sterling Family Trust, which owns the Clippers." Donald Sterling's attorneys contend that he is a co-owner and therefore must give his assent for the deal to go through. They also say he won't be giving it.

"Sterling is not selling the team," said his attorney, Bobby Samini. "That's his position. He's not going to sell."

Ballmer beat out bids by Guggenheim Partners and a group including former NBA All-Star Grant Hill after presenting an "all-around superior bid," according to an individual with knowledge of the negotiations. The individual, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said Ballmer made more than an hour-long personal visit to Shelly Sterling's Malibu home Sunday and laid out his plan.

"He knocked their socks off, they bonded, had a good connection," the individual said. The amount was also the largest of the offers, and Ballmer was one potential buyer to deal with rather than numerous members of a group.

Ballmer said in a statement that he is honored to have his name submitted to the NBA for approval and thanked the league for working collaboratively with him throughout the process.

"I love basketball. And I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that the Clippers continue to win — and win big — in Los Angeles," Ballmer said. "LA is one of the world's great cities — a city that embraces inclusiveness, in exactly the same way that the NBA and I embrace inclusiveness."

On Thursday, Magic Johnson lauded the deal on his Twitter account: "Steve Ballmer owning the Clippers is a big win for the City of LA and all the people who live in the City of Angels!"

Though Donald Sterling's attorneys now say he won't agree to sell the team, a May 22 letter obtained by The Associated Press and written by another of Sterling's attorneys that says that "Donald T. Sterling authorizes Rochelle Sterling to negotiate with the National Basketball Association regarding all issues in connection with a sale of the Los Angeles Clippers team." It includes the line "read and approved" and Donald Sterling's signature.

Samini said Sterling has had a change of heart primarily because of "the conduct of the NBA." He said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's decision to ban Sterling for life and fine him $2.5 million as well as to try to oust him as an owner was him acting as "judge, jury and executioner."

"They're telling me he should stand back and let them take his team because his opinion on that particular day was not good, was not popular?" Samini said. "It doesn't make sense. He's going to fight."

It's unclear how the agreement will affect a special hearing of NBA owners planned for Tuesday in New York to consider the charge against Donald Sterling for damaging the league with his comments. A three-quarters vote of the 30 owners to support the charge would have resulted in the termination of both Sterlings' ownership of the franchise. The deal is expected to be presented to the league before Tuesday, according to the individual.

Silver has said his preference would be for the franchise to be sold rather than seized — and that means sold in its entirety, with neither Sterling retaining a stake. Though according to the deal's terms Ballmer will own 100 percent of the team, Shelly Sterling may continue to be involved under conditions worked out privately with Ballmer, the individual said.

Franchise sale prices have soared since the current collective bargaining agreement was ratified in 2011. The Milwaukee Bucks were just sold to New York investment firm executives Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens for about $550 million, an NBA record.

Last year, Vivek Ranadive's group acquired a 65 percent controlling interest in the Sacramento Kings at a total franchise valuation of more than $534 million.

This is not Ballmer's first foray into potential NBA ownership. Ballmer and investor Chris Hansen headed a group that agreed to a deal to buy the Kings from the Maloof family in January 2013 with the intention of moving the team to Seattle, where the SuperSonics played until 2008.

But Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson lobbied the NBA for time to put together a bid to keep the team in California, and though the Ballmer-Hansen group later increased its offer, owners voted to deny the bid for relocation and the Kings were sold to Ranadive.

The former Microsoft CEO helped Bill Gates transform the company from a startup with fewer than 40 employees and $12 million in annual revenue into the world's most valuable business. The pair met in 1973 while living down the hall from each other in a Harvard dorm.

During his tenure at Microsoft, Ballmer was known for his competitive drive and wild displays of emotion and hand-waving.

At his farewell address to Microsoft employees, he high-fived and hugged audience members, pumped his fists in the air, and even shed tears as the popular 1987 song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" played on the sound system. In a video of the event widely viewed on YouTube, he screams: "You work for the greatest company in the world!"

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Embattled VA secretary resigns

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned Friday after publicly apologizing for systemic problems plaguing the agency’s health care system.

President Barack Obama said he accepted the retired four-star general’s resignation “with considerable regret” during an Oval Office meeting. Shinseki had been facing mounting calls to step down from lawmakers in both parties since a scathing internal report out Wednesday found broad and deep-seated problems in the sprawling health care system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.

Obama said Shinseki had served with honor, but the secretary told him the agency needs new leadership and he doesn’t want to be a distraction. “I agree. We don’t have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem,” Obama said.

The president named Sloan D. Gibson, currently the deputy VA secretary, to run the department on an interim basis while he searches for another secretary.

A career banker, Gibson has held the No. 2 post at the department since February of this year. He came to the department after serving as president and chief executive officer of the USO, a nonprofit organization that provides programs and services to US troops and their families, and after a 20-year career in banking.
Gibson is the son of an Army Air Corps member who served in World War II and grandson of a World War I Army infantryman.

In a speech earlier Friday to a veterans group, Shinseki said the problems outlined in the report were “totally unacceptable” and a “breach of trust” that he found indefensible. He announced he would take a series of steps to respond, including ousting senior officials at the troubled Phoenix health care facility, the initial focus of the investigation.

He concurred with the report’s conclusion that the problems extended throughout the VA’s 1,700 health care facilities nationwide, and said that “I was too trusting of some” in the VA system.

The VA has a goal of trying to give patients an appointment within 14 days of when they first seek care. Treatment delays — and irregularities in recording patient waiting times — have been documented in numerous reports from government and outside organizations for years and have been well-known to VA officials, members of Congress and veterans service organizations.

But the controversy now swirling around the VA stems from allegations that employees were keeping a secret waiting list at the Phoenix hospital — and that up to 40 patients may have died while awaiting care. A preliminary VA inspector general probe into the allegations found systemic falsification of appointment records at Phoenix and other locations but has not made a determination on whether any deaths are related to the delays.

The agency has been struggling to keep up with a huge demand for its services — some 9 million enrolled now compared to 8 million in 2008. The influx comes from returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, aging Vietnam War vets who now have more health problems, a move by Congress to expand the number of those eligible for care, and the migration of veterans to the VA during the last recession after they lost their jobs or switched to the VA when their private insurance became more expensive.

Shinseki said the last several weeks have been “challenging” but that his agency takes caring for veterans seriously.

“I can’t explain the lack of integrity,” he told a homeless veterans group. “I will not defend it, because it is not defensible.” The beleaguered Cabinet official received a standing ovation and loud applause.

An inspector general’s report found that about 1,700 veterans in need of care were “at risk of being lost or forgotten” after being kept off the waiting list.

Shinseki and Obama arrive for a December 2008 press conference after Shinseki was named Obama’s choice for VA secretary.

The report confirmed earlier allegations of excessive waiting times for care in Phoenix, with an average 115-day wait for a first appointment for those on the list — nearly five times as long as the 24-day average the hospital had reported.

“This situation can be fixed,” Shinseki told an audience of several hundred people from around the nation who have been working with the VA on helping homeless veterans. “Leadership and integrity problems can and must be fixed — and now.”

He said the government would not give any performance bonuses this year, would use all authority it has against those “who instigated or tolerated” the falsification of wait time records, and that performance on achieving wait time targets will no longer be considered in employee job reviews. He also asked Congress to support a bill by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) which would give the department more authority to remove senior government employees who are in leadership positions.

The House has passed a similar bill that would give the VA more ability to fire up to 450 senior executives at the agency.

Those attending Shinseki’s speech in a downtown Washington hotel were overwhelmingly friendly and supportive because of his work in sharply decreasing homelessness among veterans. Shinseki at one point noted that the number of homeless veterans has fallen by nearly 25 percent since 2013. The audience gave him a long standing ovation, whistling and hooting, when he entered the room and again before and after he spoke.

“He has made a difference. I’m living it,” said James Wheatley, a 20-year veteran of the Army who now works at a mental health facility that helps veterans in Indianapolis.

“He’s a good man,” said Steven Nelson, a veteran who works at an employment center in Tucson. “When I go to the VA (for health care), I’m well taken care of and everybody I know is.”

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Shinseki resigns amid veterans' health care uproar

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki apologized in public and then resigned in the privacy of the White House on Friday, driven from office by a mushrooming scandal over the agency's health care system that serves millions of the nation's former warriors.

U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki departs after addressing the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans May 30, 2014 in Washington, DC.

President Barack Obama said he accepted the resignation "with considerable regret," and appointed Sloan Gibson, the agency's No. 2 official, as temporary secretary. Obama also said that the Justice Department would determine if any illegality had occurred, and that a top White House aide who has been detailed to the Veterans Affairs Department would remain there for the time being.

As for Shinseki, Obama said, "I regret that he has to resign under these circumstances." He lavished praise on the Vietnam veteran and former Army chief of staff for his decades of service. He said the Cabinet officer had told him "he does not want to be a distraction" from the need to repair the agency, a task the president said pointedly could well require Congress to approve additional money.

A lifetime of service, in uniform and out, wasn't enough to save Shinseki's career, though, after agency investigators reported widespread problems in its sprawling hospital system. They reported that 1,700 veterans seeking treatment at the Phoenix facility alone were consigned to limbo because they had never been added to official wait lists.

In the 36 hours that followed the findings on Wednesday, Democrats in tough re-election races joined Republicans in clamoring for Shinseki's resignation.

In an appearance before a veterans group before he met with Obama, Shinseki said, "I extend an apology to the people whom I care most deeply about — that's the veterans of this great country — to their families and loved ones, who I have been honored to serve for over five years now. It's the calling of a lifetime."

He called the problems outlined in the midweek report "totally unacceptable" and a "breach of trust" that he found indefensible. He announced he would take a series of steps to respond, including ousting senior officials at the troubled Phoenix health care facility.

He concurred with the report's conclusion that the problems extended throughout the VA's 1,700 health care facilities nationwide, and he said that "I was too trusting of some" in the VA system.
Obama said Shinseki told him the agency needs new leadership and that he didn't want to be a distraction. "I agree. We don't have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem."

As his last act as a Cabinet official, Shinseki submitted a preliminary audit, which concluded that some VA schedulers were pressured to make waiting times for medical appointments appear shorter than they actually were.

The review said the agency would revoke a 14-day standard as a goal in performance reviews, and also suspend bonuses for this budget year.

Republicans in Congress said Shinseki's resignation alone wasn't enough to solve problems at an agency that has been struggling to keep up with a huge increase in demand for its services. About 9 million veterans are now enrolled in the health care system, roughly 1 million more than only six years ago. The influx comes from returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, aging Vietnam War vets who now have more health problems, a move by Congress to expand the number of those eligible for care and the migration of veterans to the VA during the last recession after they lost their jobs.

And Shinseki's departure seemed unlikely to end an election-year political struggle between the parties.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the resignation "does not absolve the president of his responsibility to step in and make things right for our veterans." He and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called on Democrats to join them in legislation "that would help to fix this system that has so failed our veterans."

The Republican-controlled House passed one measure recently to give the VA more ability to fire up to 450 senior executives. The Democratic-controlled Senate is likely to debate a different version in the following week.

Gibson, the president's choice to take over the agency at least temporarily, has held the No. 2 post since February. He was formerly president and chief executive officer of the USO, the nonprofit organization that provides programs and services to U.S. troops and their families. Gibson is the son of an Army Air Corpsman who served in World War II and grandson of a World War I Army infantryman.

The VA has a goal of trying to give patients appointments within 14 days of when they first seek care. Treatment delays — and irregularities in recording patient waiting times — have been documented in numerous reports from government and outside organizations for years and have been well-known to VA officials, members of Congress and veterans service organizations.

But the controversy now swirling around the VA stems from allegations that employees were keeping a secret waiting list at the Phoenix hospital — and suggestions that up to 40 patients may have died while awaiting care. A preliminary VA inspector general probe into the allegations found systemic falsification of appointment records at Phoenix and other locations but has not made a determination on whether any deaths are related to the delays.

President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 30, 2014, following his meeting with Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki.

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Southwest gets hefty fines for advertising $59 fares that didn't exist

The fares advertised by Southwest Airlines sounded too good to be true: $59 for flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Chicago or New York.

The Department of Transportation has fined Southwest Airlines $300,000 for violating the full-fare advertising rule. Above, a Southwest passenger checks in at Dallas Love Field in February.

But when would-be fliers tried to book the fares, they found no seats available on those routes.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced $200,000 in fines Thursday against the Dallas-based carrier for violating the federal full fare advertising rule.

The regulation requires airlines to display the full cost of all fares, including taxes and fees. Airlines that advertise fares for specific routes must also offer a "reasonable numbers of seats" for those flights.

In addition to the fine issued Thursday, the DOT ordered the airline to pay a $100,000 penalty that had been suspended after a previous violation of the same rule.

Southwest Airlines said the latest violation was the result of an error in a television ad. The airline said it never intended to offer the $59 fare for flights to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

"As soon as we became aware of our mistake, we pulled all incorrect advertisements off the air," the airline said in a statement.

In the previous violation, Southwest advertised $66 one-way fares from Dallas Love Field to Branson, Mo., between March 1, 2013, and March 21, 2013.  However, the DOT found that there were no seats available at the advertised price during the sale period.

The DOT fined Southwest $200,000 for that violation but suspended half the fine on the condition that the airline "cease and desist" from violating the same rule for a period of one year.

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Virgin space flights cleared for take-off

Richard Branson's dream of commercial space flights took a step nearer reality after Virgin Galactic signed a deal with US aviation authorities to let it blast paying customers into space, the company said on Thursday.

The agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sets out how routine space missions from the Spaceport America base in the US state of New Mexico will be coordinated with the normal air traffic control system.

Commercial flights are to begin by the end of this year and more than 600 people have already signed up at $250 000 each to take a trip on SpaceShipTwo.

“Our team is working hard to begin routine and affordable space launches from Spaceport America and this agreement brings us another step closer to that goal,” said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides.

“We are grateful to the FAA and New Mexico for their partnership to achieve this milestone.”

The Virgin announcement came hours before Branson's main rival in the commercial space race was to unveil its latest spacecraft.

Elon Musk, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX, was to present his company's “next generation” Dragon V2 spacecraft at an event in California on Thursday evening.

Company wants to start offering flights by end of 2014.

It's all systems go for Virgin Galactic.

The commercial space flight company owned by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said Wednesday it has clearance from the U.S. government to begin planning space flights.

The flights will leave from Spaceport, which is owned by the state of New Mexico and was built to provide commercial space flight services.

The Federal Aviation Administration will work with local air traffic control to clear airspace for Virgin space flights.

Virgin Galactic has been gearing up to offer space flight services for the general public and has said it wants to start offering flights by the end of 2014.

Branson and his family will be on Virgin's first space flight.

Virgin Galactic said it has accepted more than $70 million in deposits from about 580 individuals. That's about 10% more than the total number of people who have ever gone to space.

Virgin Galactic's space vehicle is called SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic is preparing to take its first round of passengers on a suborbital space flight on SpaceShipTwo (pictured above) later this year. 

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Veterans Affairs scandal:1,700 vets kept off waiting list.

Navy veteran Ken Senft turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care in 2011 after his private insurance grew too costly. It could have been a fatal mistake, he now says.

A few years ago, the 65-year-old had a lesion on his head. He went to a VA clinic near his home outside Phoenix, but he said the doctor told him it could be two years before he might get an appointment with a dermatologist.

So he paid out of pocket to see a private physician. Turns out, he had cancer.

"What if I had waited two years?" Senft said in frustration. "I might be dead."

Senft's story comes amid allegations of delayed care and misconduct at VA facilities across the nation.

A probe of operations at the Phoenix VA Health Care System found that about 1,700 veterans in need of care were "at risk of being lost or forgotten" after being kept off an official waiting list. The investigation, initially focused on the Phoenix hospital, found systemic problems in the VA's sprawling nationwide system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.

The scathing report by the VA Office of Inspector General released Wednesday increased pressure on VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign.

The top Republican and Democrat in the House, however, weren't ready to join in those calls. House Speak John Boehner said he is reserving judgment, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she has great respect for Shinseki and firing him would reward those who misled him.

President Barack Obama found report's findings "extremely troubling," his spokesman, Jay Carney, said.

"As the president said last week, the VA must not wait for current investigations of VA operations to conclude before taking steps to improve care," Carney said in a statement.

The interim findings confirmed allegations of excessive delayed care in Phoenix, with an average 115-day wait for a first appointment for those on the waiting list. That's nearly five times longer than the Phoenix hospital system had reported to national VA administrators.

"While our work is not complete, we have substantiated that significant delays in access to care negatively impacted the quality of care at this medical facility," Richard J. Griffin, the department's acting inspector general, wrote in the 35-page report. It found that "inappropriate scheduling practices are systemic throughout" some 1,700 VA health facilities nationwide, including 150 hospitals and more than 800 clinics.

Griffin said 42 centers are now under investigation.

"What makes me angry is the fact that there are a lot of veterans who couldn't afford to do what I did, and it would have been too late for them," said Senft, who was wounded during the Vietnam War. "It's just a disappointment when you serve your country and you expect to get good medical care - and you just don't."

Several Republican lawmakers and a handful of Democrats have called for Shinseki's resignation.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also have called for criminal probes.

"I believe that this issue has reached a level that requires the Justice Department involvement. These allegations are not just administrative problems. These are criminal problems," McCain said during a news conference.

Miller said the report confirmed that "wait time schemes and data manipulation are systemic throughout VA and are putting veterans at risk in Phoenix and across the country."

Dr. Samuel Foote, a former clinic director for the VA in Phoenix who was the first to bring the allegations to light, said the findings were no surprise.

"I knew about all of this all along," Foote told The Associated Press. "The only thing I can say is you can't celebrate the fact that vets were being denied care."

Still, Foote said it is good that the VA finally appears to be addressing long-standing problems.

"Everybody has been gaming the system for a long time," he said. "Phoenix just took it to another level. ... The magnitude of the problem nationwide is just so huge, so it's hard for most people to get a grasp on it."

Shinseki called the Inspector General's findings "reprehensible to me, to this department and to veterans." He said he was directing the Phoenix VA to immediately address each of the 1,700 veterans waiting for appointments. The hospital system's director has already been placed on leave amid the probe.

Reports that VA employees have been "cooking the books" have exploded since Foote went public with allegations that management at the VA in Phoenix had instructed staff to keep a secret waiting list to hide delayed care and that as many as 40 patients may have died while waiting for appointments.

Griffin said he's found no evidence so far that any of those deaths were caused by delays.

Lawmakers say the agency's 14-day target for seeing patients seeking appointments is unrealistic, while the Inspector General's report found it encourages employees to "game" the appointment system in order to collect performance bonuses.

The report described a process in which schedulers assigned appointments based on the next available slot, but marked it down as the patient's desired date.

"This results in a false 0-day wait time," the report said.

Thomas Lynch, of the Veterans Health Administration, an arm of the VA, said VA health care quality compares favorably with that in the private sector while also explaining that a bonus system based on meeting the 14-day goal had a negative effect.

"Our performance measures have become our goals, not tools to help us understand where we needed to invest resources," he told the House Veterans Affairs Committee late Wednesday. "We undermined the integrity of our data when we elevated our performance measures to goals."

Griffin said investigators' next steps include determining whether names of veterans awaiting care were purposely omitted from electronic waiting lists and at whose direction and whether any deaths were related to delays in care.

Investigators at some of the 42 facilities "have identified instances of manipulation of VA data that distort the legitimacy of reported waiting times," he said.

Griffin said investigators are making surprise visits, a step that could reduce "the risk of destruction of evidence, manipulation of data, and coaching staff on how to respond to our interview questions."

U.S. Justice Department officials have already been brought into cases where there is evidence of a criminal or civil violation, Griffin said.

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41 charged in insurance scam involving dead deer

Forty-one people in Philadelphia are facing charges in what prosecutors call an elaborate insurance fraud scheme that used dead deer to fake car accidents.

Undated booking photograph of Ronald Galati.

Ronald Galati Sr. is accused of running a $5 million scam out of his auto body shop.

District Attorney Seth Williams said Wednesday that Galati coached customers to claim they'd struck a deer rather than a car. That way, insurance companies would consider them "no fault" accidents and pay the claims without raising the customers' premiums.

Investigators say Galati stored deer carcasses, blood and fur in the back of his shop to use as props.

Also charged are Galati's wife, son and daughter, several insurance adjusters, tow truck drivers, a city official and a police officer.

Defense attorney Anthony Voci said he couldn't comment specifically on the charges because he hadn't seen the grand jury presentment but that his client is innocent until proven guilty.

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