Google updates Gmail for iOS to support multiple accounts, deliver autocomplete suggestions

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Snooki Gives Kate Middleton Motherhood Advice

By Julia Haskins

12/04/2012 at 05:30 PM EST

Nicole Polizzi and Kate Middleton

Daniel Boczarski/WireImage; REX USA

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi is lending her expertise to Kate Middleton – as a mommy mentor!

The Jersey Shore star, who gave birth to son Lorenzo in August, offered the expectant Duchess of Cambridge a few tips on being a new mom.

"It's hard, but don't stress out,” Polizzi told the New York Daily News. "Enjoy your pregnancy and be excited."

Middleton is currently in the hospital to treat her severe morning sickness, but Polizzi encouraged her to take it easy out of the public eye. “Enjoy your time at home – or the castle, in her case – with the baby,” she said. “Especially the first few months.”

Nobody said it would be easy, but Polizzi knows from experience that it's worth the (baby) bumps along the way.

"You'll get to know him/her, keep them safe and fall more in love each day," she says.

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

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Online:

Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv

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Decapitated body of man found at hospital

About L.A. Now

L.A. Now is the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news section for Southern California. It is produced by more than 80 reporters and editors in The Times’ Metro section, reporting from the paper’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters as well as bureaus in Costa Mesa, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Riverside, Ventura and West Los Angeles.

Have a story tip for L.A. Now?

Can I call someone with news?

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A Person of Interest

John McAfee, a pioneer in computer security, is on the run in Belize, where he is a person of interest in his neighbor’s murder. On Nov. 8, three days before his neighbor was found dead, Mr. McAfee appeared at a ceremony at the San Pedro Police Station in Ambergris Caye, Belize.

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Parents Learn of Daughter's Suspicious Death Via Facebook

By Steve Helling

12/03/2012 at 05:55 PM EST

On the evening of Nov. 18, Judith and James Jackson logged onto Facebook to find a horrifying message. Their daughter's college friend posted on their wall, consoling them about the loss of their daughter, Jasmine.

Until that moment, the Jacksons thought their daughter was alive and well, enjoying her freshman year at Valdosta State University in southern Georgia.

Jasmine Benjamin, a 17-year-old nursing student, was found dead in her dorm's common study area around noon that day. Authorities soon determined that the she had been dead for at least 12 hours but her roommates thought she was simply sleeping on the study room couch. Because the body had been moved, Valdosta police suspect foul play.

The news has left her parents reeling.

"That's the most disturbing part of it. Aren't there RAs?" her mother, Judith Jackson tells CBS. "What kind of school is this that they don't know someone's laying on the couch – to go check on them after a certain amount of hours?"

Valdosta State University released a statement saying it was "continuing to work with law enforcement agencies in their ongoing investigation into the death of Jasmine Benjamin."

Police are still investigating. Autopsy and toxicology results are not back yet.

"We want answers," says Jasmine's stepfather, James Jackson. "This family needs closure. It's extremely tough when you don't know, and you have no answers."

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Fossil fuel subsidies in focus at climate talks

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $1 per gallon at the pump.

"Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest," al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. "God has given us a blessing."

To those looking for a global response to climate change, it's more like a curse.

Qatar — the host of U.N. climate talks that entered their final week Monday — is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $500 billion globally last year. Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.

"We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution," said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.

His group presented research Monday showing that in addition to the fuel subsidies in developing countries, rich nations in 2011 gave more than $58 billion in tax breaks and other production subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. figure was $13 billion.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent by 2050.

Yet the argument is just recently gaining traction in climate negotiations, which in two decades have failed to halt the rising temperatures that are melting Arctic ice, raising sea levels and shifting weather patterns with impacts on droughts and floods.

In Doha, the talks have been slowed by wrangling over financial aid to help poor countries cope with global warming and how to divide carbon emissions rights until 2020 when a new planned climate treaty is supposed to enter force. Calls are now intensifying to include fossil fuel subsidies as a key part of the discussion.

"I think it is manifestly clear ... that this is a massive missing piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister for climate change.

He is spearheading an initiative backed by Scandinavian countries and some developing countries to put fuel subsidies on the agenda in various forums, citing the U.N. talks as a "natural home" for the debate.

The G-20 called for their elimination in 2009, and the issue also came up at the U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Frustrated that not much has happened since, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Monday she planned to raise the issue with environment ministers on the sidelines of the talks in Doha.

Many developing countries are positive toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, not just to protect the climate but to balance budgets. Subsidies introduced as a form of welfare benefit decades ago have become an increasing burden to many countries as oil prices soar.

"We are reviewing the subsidy periodically in the context of the total economy for Qatar," the tiny Persian gulf country's energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told reporters Monday.

Qatar's National Development Strategy 2011-2016 states it more bluntly, saying fuel subsides are "at odds with the aspirations" and sustainability objectives of the wealthy emirate.

The problem is that getting rid of them comes with a heavy political price.

When Jordan raised fuel prices last month, angry crowds poured into the streets, torching police cars, government offices and private banks in the most sustained protests to hit the country since the start of the Arab unrest. One person was killed and 75 others were injured in the violence.

Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Sudan have also seen violent protests this year as governments tried to bring fuel prices closer to market rates.

Iran has used a phased approach to lift fuel subsidies over the past several years, but its pump prices remain among the cheapest in the world.

"People perceive it as something that the government is taking away from them," said Kretzmann. "The trick is we need to do it in a way that doesn't harm the poor."

The International Energy Agency found in 2010 that fuel subsidies are not an effective measure against poverty because only 8 percent of such subsidies reached the bottom 20 percent of income earners.

The IEA, which only looked at consumption subsidies, this year said they "remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum toward their reform appears to have been lost."

In the U.S., environmental groups say fossil fuel subsidies include tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels.

Industry groups, like the Independent Petroleum Association of America, are against removing such support, saying that would harm smaller companies, rather than the big oil giants.

In Doha, Mohammed Adow, a climate activist with Christian Aid, called all fuel subsidies "reckless and dangerous," but described removing subsidies on the production side as "low-hanging fruit" for governments if they are serious about dealing with climate change.

"It's going to oil and coal companies that don't need it in the first place," he said.

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Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report

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Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter

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Girl, 12, held as sex slave, forced into prostitution by couple, police allege

An Oceanside couple are scheduled to be in court Monday to face accusations that they kept an underage
Mexican immigrant as a sex slave, forcing her into prostitution and
beating her severely.

Marcial Garcia Hernandez, 45, and Inez Martinez Garcia, 43, were
arrested Thursday on suspicion of 13 felony counts of aggravated sexual
assault of a child under age 14.

The girl had been smuggled into the U.S. at age 12, and the abuse by
Hernandez and Garcia occurred over a 21-month period, the Sheriff's
Department said.

Hernandez and Garcia forced the girl to care for their three children
and cook and clean for the family, as well as have sex with Hernandez,
according to Deputy G. Crysler, an investigator with the North County
Human Trafficking Task Force.

"When the girl victim refused to participate in the sex acts or did
not complete her tasks in a timely or correct manner, she was beaten,"
Crysler said.

The couple forced the victim into lying about her age so she could
work at a local restaurant, with Garcia and Hernandez keeping the money
she earned, according to the arrest documents. She was also forced into
having sex with older men, with Garcia and Hernandez keeping the money
paid by "johns," the documents said.

Authorities were called after the victim was allegedly beaten by
Garcia. Reunited with her family, she returned to Mexico. Recently,
she returned to the U.S. and is assisting in the criminal investigation,
according to the Sheriff's Department.

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Lindsay Lohan is 'victim' despite criminal charges, lawyer says

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Inmate charged in 1991 slaying, rape of 16-year-old Compton girl

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

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Egyptian Court Postpones Ruling on Constitutional Assembly

Wissam Nassar

Egyptian police officers stood guard outside Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Sunday, while supporters of President Mohamed Morsi protested near the entrance of the building.

CAIRO — Egypt’s highest court on Sunday postponed its much-awaited ruling on the legitimacy of the legislative assembly that drafted a new charter last week, accusing a crowd of Islamists of blocking judges from entering their building on what it called “a dark black day in the history of the Egyptian judiciary.”

Although hundreds of security officers were on hand to ensure that judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court could get into the court, and civilians came and went without any problems, the accusations intensified a standoff between the judges appointed under former President Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s new Islamist leaders that has thrown the political transition into a new crisis 22 months after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster.

Upon approaching the court on Sunday morning, the judges said in a statement that they saw crowds “closing the entrances of the roads to the gates, climbing the fences, chanting slogans denouncing its judges and inciting the people against them.”

The judges were prevented from entering “because of the threat of harm and danger to their safety,” the statement said, calling it “an abhorrent scene of shame and disgrace.”

As a result, the judges announced that they were “suspending the court’s sessions” until they could resume their work without “psychological and physical pressures.”

Anticipation of the court’s decision on the new constitution had set off the latest political crisis. Fear that the court would dissolve the assembly and undo months of work led President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, to announce 10 days ago that his edicts were not be subject to judicial review until the completion of the constitution.

Despite Mr. Morsi’s attempt, the same anticipation of dissolution drove the Islamist-dominated assembly to rush out a hurried constitution before the court could act and against the objections of Egypt’s secular parties and the Coptic Christian Church. Judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak have previously dissolved the elected Parliament and the first constitutional assembly.

The sudden effort by the president and his Islamist allies to push through a constitution over any objections from their secular factions or the courts has unified the opposition, prompted hundreds of thousands of protesters to take to the streets and set off a wave of attacks on a dozen offices of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. A judicial trade association has urged judges across the country to go on strike, and some of the highest courts have joined it.

Over the weekend, Mr. Morsi continued to push his plans for the new constitution, setting a national referendum on it for Dec. 15.

“I pray to God and hope that it will be a new day of democracy in Egypt,” he said in a nationally televised speech, calling for a “national dialogue.”

But his recent tone and actions reminded critics of the autocratic ways of his predecessor, and have aroused a new debate here about his commitment to democracy and pluralism at a time when he and his Islamist allies dominate political life.

Mr. Morsi’s advisers call the tactics a regrettable but necessary response to genuine threats to the political transition from what they call the deep state — the vestiges of the autocracy of former President Mubarak, especially in the news media and the judiciary.

But his critics say they hear a familiar paranoia in Mr. Morsi’s new tone that reminds them of talk of the “hidden hands” and foreign plots that Mr. Mubarak once used to justify his authoritarianism.

“I have sent warnings to many people who know who they are, who may be committing crimes against the homeland,” Mr. Morsi declared in an interview with state television on Thursday night, referring repeatedly to secret information about a “conspiracy” and “real and imminent threats” that he would not disclose. “If anybody tries to derail the transition, I will not allow them.”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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Angry Birds Star Wars updated with 20 additional levels, Princess Leia cameo

Rovio on Thursday updated its immensely popular Angry Birds Star Wars game to include 20 additional levels. The latest game in the bird-slinging franchise was released earlier this month and was an instant hit, topping the iTunes App Store in less than three hours. In the most recent update, gamers must help the birds escape from the AT-ATs and Pigtroopers on the remote ice world of Hoth. Luckily, the rebel birds have a secret weapon — Princess Leia.

“It is a dark time for the Rebellion,” Rovio wrote on its website. ”Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth. Unfortunately the evil Lord Vader discovers their hideout, and the desperate Rebel birds must escape the AT-ATs and Pigtroopers hot on their trail. But the Rebels have an ace up their sleeve with the debut of PRINCESS LEIA and her attractive new power!”

Angry Birds Star Wars is available for Android, iOS, Macs and PCs. The Hoth trailer follows below.

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