Forget distinctions like tropical storm or hurricane. Don't get fixated on a particular track. Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As Hurricane Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean — where it left nearly five dozen dead — to meet two other powerful winter storms, experts said it didn't matter how strong the storm was when it hit land: The rare hybrid storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "This is a very large area."

President Barack Obama was monitoring the storm and working with state and locals governments to make sure they get the resources needed to prepare, administration officials said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency Saturday as hundreds of coastal residents started moving inland and the state was set to close its casinos. New York's governor was considering shutting down the subways to avoid flooding and half a dozen states warned residents to prepare for several days of lost power.

Sandy weakened briefly to a tropical storm early Saturday but was soon back up to Category 1 strength, packing 75 mph winds about 305 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., as of 11 p.m. Forecasters said the storm was spreading tropical storm conditions across the coastline of North Carolina, and they were expected to move up the mid-Atlantic coastline late Sunday. Experts said the storm was most likely to hit the southern New Jersey coastline by late Monday or early Tuesday.

Governors from North Carolina, where heavy rain was expected Sunday, to Connecticut declared states of emergency. Delaware ordered mandatory evacuations for coastal communities by 8 p.m. Sunday.

Christie, who was widely criticized for not interrupting a family vacation in Florida while a snowstorm pummeled the state in 2010, broke off campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in North Carolina on Friday to return home.

"I can be as cynical as anyone," the pugnacious chief executive said in a bit of understatement Saturday. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you otherwise might have been."

The storm forced the presidential campaign to juggle schedules. Romney scrapped plans to campaign Sunday in the swing state of Virginia and switched his schedule for the day to Ohio. First lady Michelle Obama canceled an appearance in New Hampshire for Tuesday, and Obama moved a planned Monday departure for Florida to Sunday night to beat the storm. He canceled appearances in Northern Virginia on Monday and Colorado on Tuesday.

In Ship Bottom, just north of Atlantic City, Alice and Giovanni Stockton-Rossini spent Saturday packing clothing in the backyard of their home, a few hundred yards from the ocean on Long Beach Island. Their neighborhood was under a voluntary evacuation order, but they didn't need to be forced.

"It's really frightening," Alice Stockton-Rossi said. "But you know how many times they tell you, 'This is it, it's really coming and it's really the big one' and then it turns out not to be? I'm afraid people will tune it out because of all the false alarms before ... (but) this one might be the one."

A few blocks away, Russ Linke was taking no chances. He and his wife secured the patio furniture, packed the bicycles into the pickup truck, and headed off the island.

What makes the storm so dangerous and unusual is that it is coming at the tail end of hurricane season and the beginning of winter storm season, "so it's kind of taking something from both," said Jeff Masters, director of the private service Weather Underground.

reaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”
Barack Obama

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

Tyrann Mathieu's chances of returning to LSU's football team took a serious hit Thursday when the 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist and three other former Tigers players were arrested on drug-related charges.

Mathieu and former LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson were charged with simple possession of marijuana, the Baton Rouge police department said in a release.

Former Tigers linebacker Karnell Hatcher also was charged with simple possession while former defensive back Derrick Bryant faces the most serious charge of possession with intent to distribute and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to police spokesman Don Kelly.

Known as the "Honey Badger," Mathieu was kicked off the team in August for failing multiple drug tests. He returned to the school as a regular student, hoping to earn a second chance at returning to the team.

But Thursday's arrest greatly narrows the chances of such a return for Mathieu, who would have been a junior this year and was suspended last season for failing a drug test for synthetic marijuana.

According to the police report, officers found the marijuana in Mathieu's apartment Thursday afternoon. Mathieu answered the door, and officers "immediately smelled a strong odor of marijuana," the police report stated.

After Mathieu, 20, gave the police his consent to search the apartment, officers discovered a marijuana grinder, a digital scale and 10 bags of high-grade marijuana, including seven in Bryant's backpack, according to the report.

Police say they were called to the apartment complex after receiving a complaint about a man, who later was identified as the 22-year-old Jefferson, forcing his way through the security gate before going to Mathieu's apartment.

Les Miles expected there to be a happy ending for Tyrann Mathieu. But after the ex-LSU cornerback's latest arrest, that's unlikely to come in Baton Rouge, writes

It was the second arrest for Jefferson, the starting quarterback on last season's team that lost to Alabama in the BCS National Championship game.

A three-year starter, Jefferson missed the first three games last season after being arrested for his involvement in a bar fight during August camp. He was reinstated to the team after charges against him were reduced to a misdemeanor.

Lance Unglesby, Jefferson's lawyer in the misdemeanor criminal case, said a discovery hearing in that matter is scheduled next week. He said his client has always maintained his innocence in the bar fight.

"My opinion that Jordan is a fine young man remains the same," Unglesby said.

Unglesby said he had not yet been provided with any details of Jefferson's latest arrest, but stressed, "All individuals are presumed innocent and I look forward to the opportunity to examine the facts of this case to find out what really happened."

It was not immediately known whether Mathieu, Hatcher or Bryant had lawyers.

Hatcher was a linebacker who started last season until losing his starting job to current starter Kevin Minter. Bryant played sparingly but had a significant role in LSU's 2011 win over Auburn, playing after the suspension of Mathieu created a need for LSU in its nickel package.

The question of whether the United States should seek to engage Iran in one-on-one talks on its nuclear program joined the likely topics for Monday’s final presidential debate as supporters of President Obama and Mitt Romney jousted on Sunday over the issue.

The prospect of such talks was raised in an article published over the weekend by The New York Times that said Iran and the United States had agreed in principle to direct talks after the presidential election.

On Saturday, the White House denied that a final agreement on direct talks had been reached, while saying that it remained open to such contacts. On Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry dismissed the report.

But if the report proved to be true, said a supporter of Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, Iran’s motives should be seriously questioned.

“I hope we don’t take the bait,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think this is a ploy by the Iranians” to buy time for their nuclear program and divide the international coalition, he said.

A supporter of Mr. Obama, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on the same program that the tough international sanctions the president helped marshal against Iran might be bearing fruit exactly as hoped, forcing Iran to blink.

“This month of October, the currency in Iran has declined 40 percent in value,” Mr. Durbin, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said. “There is unrest in the streets of Tehran, and the leaders in Iran are feeling it. That’s exactly what we wanted the sanctions program to do.”

The Times, citing unnamed senior Obama administration officials, reported over the weekend that after secret exchanges, American and Iranian officials had agreed in principle to hold one-on-one negotiations between the nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, denied on Sunday that any direct talks had been scheduled. “We do not have anything such as talks with the United States,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Mr. Salehi predicted that there would be a new round of talks in November with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — including the United States — and Germany, but said that “there is no fixed date yet.” Several rounds of such talks have failed to produce a breakthrough. The United States and its partners say Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at producing a weapon, but Iran says the program is for peaceful purposes.

Weighing in on the topic from Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that although he did not know whether the United States and Iran had discussed the possibility of direct negotiations, “very sharp sanctions and a credible military option” were the best means to halt Tehran’s nuclear program. He said Iran had used earlier multinational talks “to drag its feet and to gain time” to advance its weapons program.

When President Obama and Mitt Romney sit down Monday night for the last of their three debates, two things should be immediately evident: there should be no pacing the stage or candidates’ getting into each other’s space, and there should be no veering into arguments over taxes.

This debate is about how America deals with the world — and how it should.

If the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, has his way, it will be the most substantive of the debates. He has outlined several topics: America’s role in the world, the continuing war in Afghanistan, managing the nuclear crisis with Iran and the resultant tensions with Israel, and how to deal with rise of China.

The most time, Mr. Schieffer has said, will be spent on the Arab uprisings, their aftermath and how the terrorist threat has changed since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. No doubt the two candidates will spar again, as they did in the second debate, about whether the Obama administration was ready for the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, and three other Americans. Mr. Romney was widely judged to not have had his most effective critique ready, and this time, presumably, he will be out to correct that.

The early line is that this is an opportunity for Mr. Obama to shine, and to repair the damage from the first debate. (He was already telling jokes the other night, at a dinner in New York, about his frequent mention of Osama bin Laden’s demise.)

But we can hope that it is a chance for both candidates to describe, at a level of detail they have not yet done, how they perceive the future of American power in the world. They view American power differently, a subject I try to grapple with at length in a piece in this Sunday’s Review, “The Debatable World.”

LIBYA AND BENGHAZI Both candidates will come ready for a fight on this topic, but the question is whether it is the right fight. Mr. Obama already admitted mistakes on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and promised to get to the bottom of them, but the White House has been less than transparent about what kind of warnings filtered up from the intelligence agencies before the attack on the consulate, and whether there was a way that American security forces could have arrived sooner, perhaps in time to save some of the American lives. No doubt the argument will focus on a narrower issue: why the administration stuck so long to its story that this was a protest against a film that turned into something worse, rather than a preplanned attack by insurgents. For Mr. Romney, the task is to show that the Benghazi attack was symptomatic of bigger failings in the Middle East, a road he started down in the last debate, but an argument he never completed.

Star gazers will want to be looking upward this weekend: The Orionid meteor shower is one of the best meteor showers of the year and should not be missed.

According to NASA's website: "Earth will pass through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, (the) source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Forecasters expect 25 meteors per hour when the shower peaks on Oct. 21."

The best part of this cosmic display: No telescope required—but you may need an alarm clock. According to L.A.'s Griffith Observatory, the brightest displays will fall between 11 p.m. Saturday and 5:40 a.m. Sunday, Pacific time.

Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, noted in a statement, "With no Moon to spoil the show, observing conditions should be ideal." He added, "The Orionid meteor shower isn't the strongest, but it is one of the most beautiful showers of the year."

Police have found an unidentified body in in an Arvada, Colo., park, just a few miles from where 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway went missing last Friday.

It could take time to make a positive identification of the body found in the Pattridge Park open space in Arvada, police said, and officials haven't tied the crime scene to the missing girl.

"The Arvada Police Department and Westminster Police Department are working jointly with additional resources to process that crime scene," Westminster, Colo., police investigator Trevor Materasso told reporters this evening. "At this time, we're unable to make any connection to the disappearance of Jessica Ridgeway. That crime scene will exist through the evening and into tomorrow morning."

However, investigators believe it is the body of the 10-year old who vanished last week on her walk to school, sources told ABC News.

Earlier today, investigators said Jessica's parents were not suspects in her disappearance, which they referred to as a likely abduction.

"At this point in the investigation, after thoroughly looking at the parents, we're confident that they're not involved in the disappearance of Jessica Ridgeway," Materasso said earlier. "The focus shifts to an unknown suspect, as we think that she was abducted."

Sarah Ridgeway told police she last saw her daughter in Westminster, Colo., last Friday morning when Jessica left for school. The fifth-grader never showed up at a nearby park where she was supposed to meet friends for the one-mile walk to her elementary school.

The school called to report Jessica absent, but Sarah Ridgeway told police she was asleep during the day because she works overnights and did not get the call until eight hours later, when she called police.

Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities—questioning, say, a piece of data released by central headquarters—would result in mobs of administration sympathizers claiming you should feel "embarrassed" and labeling you a fool, or worse.

Editorial board member Steve Moore on the good and bad of the jobs report and whether it will help President Obama's campaign.

Soviet Russia perhaps? Communist China? Nope, that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests that a certain government datum (like the September unemployment rate of 7.8%) doesn't make sense.

Unfortunately for those who would like me to pipe down, the 7.8% unemployment figure released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week is downright implausible. And that's why I made a stink about it.

Before I explain why the number is questionable, though, a few words about where I'm coming from. Contrary to some of the sound-and-fury last week, I do not work for the Mitt Romney campaign. I am definitely not a surrogate. My wife, Suzy, is not associated with the campaign, either. She worked at Bain Consulting (not Bain Capital) right after business school, in 1988 and 1989, and had no contact with Mr. Romney.

The Obama campaign and its supporters, including bigwigs like David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, along with several cable TV anchors, would like you to believe that BLS data are handled like the gold in Fort Knox, with gun-carrying guards watching their every move, and highly trained, white-gloved super-agents counting and recounting hourly.

Let's get real. The unemployment data reported each month are gathered over a one-week period by census workers, by phone in 70% of the cases, and the rest through home visits. In sum, they try to contact 60,000 households, asking a list of questions and recording the responses.
Some questions allow for unambiguous answers, but others less so. For instance, the range for part-time work falls between one hour and 34 hours a week. So, if an out-of-work accountant tells a census worker, "I got one baby-sitting job this week just to cover my kid's bus fare, but I haven't been able to find anything else," that could be recorded as being employed part-time.

The possibility of subjectivity creeping into the process is so pervasive that the BLS's own "Handbook of Methods" has a full page explaining the limitations of its data, including how non-sampling errors get made, from "misinterpretation of the questions" to "errors made in the estimations of missing data."

Bottom line: To suggest that the input to the BLS data-collection system is precise and bias-free is—well, let's just say, overstated.

Even if the BLS had a perfect process, the context surrounding the 7.8% figure still bears serious skepticism. Consider the following:

In August, the labor-force participation rate in the U.S. dropped to 63.5%, the lowest since September 1981. By definition, fewer people in the workforce leads to better unemployment numbers. That's why the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% in August from 8.3% in July.

Meanwhile, we're told in the BLS report that in the months of August and September, federal, state and local governments added 602,000 workers to their payrolls, the largest two-month increase in more than 20 years. And the BLS tells us that, overall, 873,000 workers were added in September, the largest one-month increase since 1983, during the booming Reagan recovery.

These three statistics—the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers, and overall job growth, all multidecade records achieved over the past two months—have to raise some eyebrows. There were no economists, liberal or conservative, predicting that unemployment in September would drop below 8%.

I know I'm not the only person hearing these numbers and saying, "Really? If all that's true, why are so many people I know still having such a hard time finding work? Why do I keep hearing about local, state and federal cutbacks?"

As if three Emmy nominations weren't proof enough that Lena Dunham is quickly becoming a hot Hollywood commodity, the "Girls" creator/star is now the subject of a publisher bidding war.

The actress is set to pen a book of essays and bidding for the book has reached $3.7 million, with five publishers vying for Lena's material, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

PLAY IT NOW: Girls Season 1 Blu-Ray Gag Reel Clip: Lena Dunham & Andrew Rannells (Exclusive)

The hefty payday nears the $5 million comedy superstar Tina Fey received for her 2011 best seller, "Bossypants."

Lena's proposed book (tentatively titled, "Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham") will feature essays about various topics ranging from friendship, sex and dating, to eating disorders and her fascination with death, THR reported.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Emmys 2012: Stars Celebrate At The Afterparties!

Lena is expected to choose a publisher early next week.

After an ugly loss to the Bears on Monday night dropped the Cowboys to 2-2, owner Jerry Jones is trying to stay upbeat.

Jones said Friday on 105.3 The Fan that while he isn’t exactly thrilled with the way the team has played since the impressive Week One win against the Giants, he isn’t worried, either.

“We thought we would play better in the last three ballgames,” Jones said, via the Dallas Morning News. “Certainly in Seattle, we were not above expectations. But we met expectations and were elated with our first game. But we didn’t play as well against Seattle, a good team, hard team to beat out there. And certainly didn’t have the game we wanted to have out here against Tampa, but we won it. And then we laid an egg here against the Bears. So, I would say that we’re not up to expectations but certainly, at this juncture, not in any way dismayed or in any way thinking we won’t be the team that we want to be.”

The Eagles lead the NFC East with a 3-1 record while the Cowboys, Giants and Redskins are all at 2-2, and Jones thinks that leaves the Cowboys in fine shape.

“We haven’t really lost ground,” Jones said. “We might have missed some opportunities to gain ground, but we haven’t lost ground. Secondly, I think we can have a chance to be significantly better. The kinds of things that are beating us, are the kinds of things that coaches and players can correct.”

I’m not sure how Jones can say the Cowboys haven’t lost ground, considering that after Week One they were tied with the Eagles and a game ahead of the Giants, and now they’re a game behind the Eagles and tied with the Giants. But he is right that four weeks into the season is too soon to panic — and that the Cowboys need to play better than they have in the last three games.

In a red, ruffled dress and flowers in her hair, Whitney Kropp, the Michigan high school student picked by her classmates to be on her school’s homecoming court as a prank, took to her school’s football stadium Friday for the ceremony.


“I had thoughts about not coming, but you know what, I’m glad I changed my mind and actually came out,” Kropp told NBC News.

Kropp's appearance was met with thunderous applause and camera flashes from her fellow students at Ogemaw Heights High School in West Branch, Mich., and even members of the opposing team.

Whitney Kropp, third from left, waits for the ceremony to begin at Ogemaw Heights High School's homecoming football game on Friday.

At Kropp’s side was Josh Awrey, the class of 2015’s male representative, the Bay City Times reported.

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After the ceremony, Kropp, who said she had been bullied throughout her time in high school, told reporters that she was glad she decided to remain on the court.

“I’m overwhelmed," Kropp said. "I’m so happy – this is so much right now for me. The school is fantastic they treated me so well."

'Easy target'
Kropp said last month she was initially surprised to learn that her classmates nominated her to be in the running for her school’s homecoming queen. But she said she soon felt humiliated and betrayed when she found out that it was all a joke.

Sophomore homecoming representatives Whitney Kropp and Josh Awrey give each other a hug during the homecoming ceremony on the Ogemaw Heights High School football field on Friday.

“People had bullied on me, I guess, for my looks, how I did my hair, how I dress, my height, so I guess they thought, you know, maybe someone that is different is someone that’s an easy target,” Kropp said.

But, Kropp said she pulled through with the support of her mother and the rest of the town.

"You want to protect your kid, and you feel angry and mad at what has happened, but at the same time the outpouring to help her has been beyond expected," Kropp's mother Bernice Kropp said.

Word spread quickly through the community of about 2,100 residents in West Branch. Resident Jamie Kline started a Facebook support page, gaining more than 4,000 likes in Michigan and nationwide. Personal stories of bullying and messages of encouragement filled the page.

A salon owner in West Branch donated service to cut, color and style Kropp's hair, and other local businesses paid for her dinner, gown, shoes and tiara for the dance.

Let no one doubt New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie again. He went offscript last weekend, predicting that the narrative of the race would change Thursday morning. And lo and behold, he was right. At least for a little while, the chattering class will put a pause on all the talk about how Mitt Romney is falling behind in the polls to talk about how he managed to beat President Obama at the podium. Romney went on the offensive, forcing the president, who looked none too happy to even be there, to defend his policies. And perhaps most perplexing of all, Obama failed to mention the infamous 47-percent remark and Bain Capital, two issues that his campaign has been hammering home for months. Let’s take a look at some commentary.

Obama, like other presidents before him, “fell victim … to high expectations, a short fuse, and a hungry challenger,” writes the National Journal’s Ron Fournier. “Romney smiled and cracked jokes … Obama smirked.” It seems commentators didn’t need to watch until the end to come to that conclusion. Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith called the debate for Romney some 40 minutes in, saying the Republican’s “core success was that he won by not losing.” In Time’s Mark Halperin’s report card, it wasn’t even close. Romney got an A-, while Obama received a B-.

Although Romney may have not offered details about his plans that political junkies wanted, “someone tuning in for the first time, would surely have come away feeling that Romney was the candidate with a firm grasp of what he wanted to do and Obama the guy slightly out of his depth,” points out Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green. Indeed, writes the New York Daily News’ Joshua Greenman, Romney was “more incisive, more fluid and good-natured through it all,” and managed to be tough “without being vicious or disrespectful.”

Part of the problem was that Obama got on the wrong side of what the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza calls the “fine line between sober/serious and grim/uninterested.” He seemed to be taking on the same persona that worked for him in 2008 when he was an untested leader and was eager to prove he was ready for the job. “But now that he has been in the job for four years, Obama’s demeanor came across far less well.” The Chicago Tribune throws Obama what might be the ultimate insult, describing him as “that guy at the meeting who’s surreptitiously checking his email.”

Even Democrats were not too impressed with Obama’s debate performance. “Energy and focus all in Romney’s hands on this,” writes Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall, pointing out that even though Romney repeatedly “left himself open to wounding hits from the president,” Obama chose to “not go there.”

John Hinderaker at Power Line, a conservative blog, is veritably giddy: “It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout.” Romney “was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic.”

There were “no haymaker punches thrown and not much in the way of one-line zingers,” write Steve Holland and John Witesides at Reuters. “Romney, however, may have done himself some favors with crisper answers than Obama, who sounded professorial and a bit long-winded.” What’s undoubtedly frustrating for Democrats is that this was exactly the thing many had warned the president about before the debate.

And what seems to be, so far at least, the pretty unanimous view that Obama lost the debate may hurt him more than how he actually did at the podium. “Much worse for Obamas than the debate is the media's harsh verdict on his debate performance,” writes the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein on Twitter.

The foreclosed house for sale on the up-and-coming street pined for fresh paint and other fixes, but the Hankins family saw its potential.

Plus, at $36,000, the price was perfect for a young family trying to make ends meet in small-town Klamath Falls, Ore.

"We said, 'It needs a little bit of love, but it's got good bones,'" Jonathan Hankins recalled. "We just had no idea that those bones were poisonous."

Within days of moving in this past summer, Beth Hankins, an ER nurse, started experiencing breathing problems. Then Jonathan got migraine-like headaches and nosebleeds. By the third week, their 2-year-old son, Ezra, developed mouth sores.

"He couldn't even drink water without being in pain," said Jonathan, 32.

They were about to schedule doctor visits when a neighbor shared the bad news: 2427 Radcliffe was a former meth house.

The family ordered a $50 testing kit and had the lab expedite the results, which revealed a contamination level nearly 80 times above Oregon Heath Authority limits.

"Our walls were poisoning us," said Jonathan, who quickly moved his family to a rental home.

Buying a foreclosed house from government-sponsored Freddie Mac meant the family was informed about being responsible for detecting hazards like lead paint and asbestos, but there was no warning from real estate agents or Freddie Mac about drug activity.

Because it was being sold "as is," the couple decided to save their money and skip a traditional inspection, which would have noted superficial repairs but not the chemicals used to cook the highly addictive drug. "In the case of methamphetamine, it's an invisible toxin," Jonathan said.

Twenty-three states, including Oregon, have laws requiring sellers to disclose if a property was ever used as a clandestine drug lab. In the Hankins' case, Freddie Mac says it never knew the two-bedroom, one-bath home had a checkered past.

"We certainly empathize with the situation, but we had no prior information about the way the home had been used," Freddie Mac spokesman Brad German told Yahoo News. "If we had, of course, we would have disclosed it."

It's a Catch-22 that Joe Mazzuca of Meth Lab Cleanup, a national remediation and training company, predicts others could find themselves in. Based on national and state data, Mazzuca conservatively estimates there are 2.5 million meth-contaminated homes in the U.S. "The signs and indicators aren't always there," he said. "You don't always see the meth residue. It's extremely dangerous stuff."

His concern was echoed at a congressional hearing in August on the efforts to curb domestic methamphetamine production.

Drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, head of the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy, testified that "U.S. meth lab seizure has more than doubled between 2007 and 2010, and these labs pose a major threat to public safety and the environment."

Hong Kong real estate tycoon Cecil Chao Sze-tsung has offered a bounty of almost $65 million for any man who will woo and marry his 33-year-old daughter Gigi Chao. Since then, offers to take Gigi’s hand in marriage have been pouring forth from all over the globe. There’s just one slight problem: Gigi’s already taken.

According to reports, the announcement came on the heels of Gigi Chao’s nuptials to her longtime girlfriend, Sean Yeung, in April. The two reportedly were married in Paris and not in Hong Kong, where gay rights are limited.


In a recent South China Morning Post article, the tycoon’s daughter criticized the territory’s conservative views toward homosexuality, saying that it lagged behind the U.S. and even mainland China. (Homosexuality was officially decriminalized in Hong Kong in 1991, but same-sex unions are still not recognized.)

In an interview with the Telegraph, Gigi said she understood the reasons behind her father’s actions. “It’s not that he can’t accept me,” she told the newspaper. “It’s that he can’t accept how society would view me and the status that it would incur. Marriage is still a form of social status. I do understand him. I understand why he’s doing this.”


Her father, meanwhile, has not publicly acknowledged his daughter’s marriage. As he told the Post:

    I do not mind whether [the man who marries Gigi] is rich or poor. The important thing is that he is generous and kindhearted. Gigi is a very good woman with both talents and looks. She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work.

Gigi, who was initially amused by the monetary offer, told the Telegraph she appreciated the gesture. “At first I was entertained by it, and then that entertainment turned into the realization and conviction that I am a really lucky girl to have such a loving daddy, because it’s really sweet of him to do something like this as an expression of his fatherly love.”

Viewers of Katie Couric's talk show were doubtless surprised on Monday when, during the discussion of eating disorders, Couric disclosed that she had had her own struggles with that cruel, sometimes deadly condition.

"I wrestled with bulimia all through college and for two years after that," she said, describing the guilt she felt at eating a single cookie or chewing a stick of gum that wasn't sugar-free.

But the bulk of the show was devoted to her guests, who included experts on the subject as well as its sufferers, notably singer and new "X Factor" judge Demi Lovato.

During the hour, Couric said little more about her experience, which she had never before made public.

"I kind of hesitated to even bring it up," she told The Associated Press after the taping. "But I felt that if I expect people on my show to be honest, then, when relevant, I owe it to people watching to be honest myself.

"I wanted to focus on my guests," she said, "while acknowledging one of the reasons this issue is so important to me: I went through it."

It's all part of a balance Couric is striving for on her new syndicated daytime show, "Katie," between sharing her experiences and turning her show into a personal confessional.

But in an exclusive interview with the AP, Couric, 55, shared details about the illness that first plagued her as a senior at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Va.

It began, she said, when she learned she had been turned down by the college she most wanted to attend.

Couric was a likely candidate for an eating disorder.

"Like a lot of young women, I was struggling with my body image," she said, "and feeling like I wasn't good enough or attractive enough or thin enough."

She termed her figure at the time as "curvy," and not the cultural ideal, which she identified as "five-foot-eight and weighing 115 pounds. It can be so difficult to embrace the body that you have if it doesn't fit with the ideal. Women get praised for being super-thin, so you keep striving to be that way."

She said her disorder "ebbed and flowed" through the years.

"Some periods were worse than others, when I was binging and purging a lot," she said. "I'd have a piece of gum that wasn't sugarless and then say, 'Oh! I've been bad,' and then feel so terrible that I would eat and throw up. It was awful.

"But what I'm describing is something so many people have gone through or are going through," she noted, "and it's so damaging, both psychically and physically."

Couric attended the University of Virginia, then landed her first job at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C. And even then, she was waging a battle with food.

With the help of a therapist, she had a grip on her condition by her early 20s, though "it didn't mean that I didn't still have issues and feel bad about myself."

But since then, she said, "I've learned how to have a much healthier relationship with food, and how to enjoy my life without obsessing about food."

She said she was glad she had shared with viewers her ordeal with bulimia, "because it's so commonplace."

And it's not the first time Couric has let the public in on a personal ordeal. Her audience shared her pain from the death of her husband, Jay Monahan, of colon cancer in 1998. The tragedy led Couric, then a co-anchor of "Today," to become an advocate for colon cancer awareness and for colonoscopies. In 2000, she underwent a colonoscopy on the air.

In an interview to air tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama will refer to Israel's concern over Iran's march toward a nuclear program as "noise."

"When it comes to our national security decisions -- any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out -- any noise that's out there," Obama says, according to AFP.

 STEVE KROFT: "How much pressure have you been getting from Prime Minister Netanyahu to make up your mind to use military force in Iran?"

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Well—look, I have conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu all the time. And I understand and share Prime Minister Netanyahu's insistence that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon, because it would threaten us, it would threaten Israel, and it would threaten the world and kick off a nuclear arms race."

STEVE KROFT:  "You’re saying, you don't feel any pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in the middle of a campaign to try and get you to change your policy and draw a line in the sand? You don’t feel any pressure?"

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "When it comes to our national security decisions—any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out—any noise that's out there. Now I feel an obligation, not pressure but obligation, to make sure that we're in close consultation with the Israelis—on these issues. Because it affects them deeply. They're one of our closest allies in the region. And we’ve got an Iranian regime that has said horrible things that directly threaten Israel’s existence."

Tim Pawlenty quit as co-chair of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Thursday to become one of Wall Street's top lobbyists in Washington. Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, will lead the Financial Services Roundtable.

The move came with Romney's campaign struggling to find its stride with just seven weeks left before Election Day. Polls show the former Massachusetts governor running neck and neck with President Barack Obama in a contest both sides predict will be very close. But Romney's campaign has been grappling with a video showing him seemingly writing off Obama supporters as having a "victim" mindset and being reliant on government handouts. And Republicans outside the campaign have been grumbling that the campaign needs a shot in the arm.

"It is an honor to call Mitt and Ann my friends," Pawlenty said in a written statement released by the Romney campaign. "As the campaign moves into the home stretch, he has my full support and continued faith in his vision and his policies."

"Tim Pawlenty is a dear friend," Romney said in the same statement. "He's brought energy, intelligence and tireless dedication to every enterprise in which he's ever been engaged, and that certainly includes my presidential campaign.

"While I regret he cannot continue as co-chair of my campaign, his new position advancing the integrity of our financial system is vital to the future of our country," Romney said. "I congratulate him."

Romney passed over Pawlenty in his search for a vice presidential candidate, eventually settling on Congressman Paul Ryan. Pawlenty had been discussed as a possible running mate for Sen. John McCain in 2008, but the veteran lawmaker picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin instead.

Midway through a routine Internet search, James Carter IV stumbled upon a video that just didn't seem right.

The grandson of former President Jimmy Carter and a self-fashioned Democratic opposition researcher, the younger Carter had watched countless hours of footage of Republican Mitt Romney and made it a habit to search YouTube every few days for keywords like "Romney" and "Republicans."

But on this day in August, one clip jumped out. There was Romney, in an undisclosed location, bluntly discussing a visit to a Chinese factory with substandard conditions.

"The hidden camera video — it was all blurred out at the beginning, and it was mysterious," Carter said. "It piqued my interest."

Something told him there might be more there than the brief clip posted on the YouTube channel "Anne Onymous." Although not affiliated with any campaign or super PAC, Carter had made it a personal mission to help get Democrats elected in 2012 — and to do his part to push back against Romney's relentless campaign-trail mockery of his grandfather.

So Carter, 35, of Atlanta, set out track down the source of the video. He sent a message to the YouTube user seeking details. No luck. But then, after sharing links to the video on Twitter, Carter realized he had a new follower with the same name as the YouTube account. He quickly shot off a direct message.

"They were wary at first," Carter said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But they did respond."


In a string of Internet conversations, Carter showed the source evidence that he had helped David Corn, a journalist with the magazine Mother Jones, report a story about Global-Tech Appliances Inc., a Chinese firm that Romney's Bain Capital briefly invested in. Both Carter and the source suspected it was that firm's factory that Romney was speaking about in the video.

"That gave me credibility," Carter said. "They opened up to me a little bit."

Soon after, Carter persuaded the source to trust Corn with the full video — on the condition that he keep the source's identity a secret. Corn ran with it, using clues in the video to triangulate when and where it had been recorded.

A Southern California chef on trial for allegedly killing his wife told police he slow-cooked her body then dumped it out as kitchen waste, according to an interview that was played in court on Tuesday.


Dawn Viens disappeared in 2009 and police identified her husband David – the chef at the former Thyme Café in Torrance, Calif. – as a prime suspect.

In 2011, investigators dug up the Thyme Café, which Dawn co-owned, searching for her body. But in a taped interview played Tuesday in court, David Viens seemed to tell police why her remains may never be found.


"I took some, some things like weights that we use and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens said on tape.

Documents: Read David Viens' interview with deputies

Viens claimed he argued with his wife, then bound her arms and feet and duct-taped her mouth shut. He said he panicked when he found her dead the next morning.

Viens claimed he stuffed his wife's 105-pound body in a drum and disposed of the remains as if it were kitchen waste.

"I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps and commingling in the, the excess, the excess protein," he could be heard saying on the tape.

David Viens told police he recovered Dawn's skull and jawbone and hid them in his mother's attic. Investigators say they never recovered any body parts.