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'For God's sake, this is too much'
Today's primaries about bragging rights
Borger: Newt and Mitt have issues
Komen exec quits over Parenthood flap
Obama to boost Alzheimer's funding
Greece unions to strike
Popular islands in chaos after mutiny
Powell boys hit with hatchet before fire
L.A. school replaces staff after abuse

Josh Powell's final voicemail: "I am not able to live without my sons"

Authorities say before Josh Powell killed himself and his two young sons in a deadly house fire, he left a voicemail saying he couldn't live without the boys and didn't want to go on anymore. ABC News has aired on "Good

Chrysler's Super Bowl commerical a nod to Obama?

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 6, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 pm and 11 pm ET! O'REILLY: "Personal Story Segment" tonight,

Santorum looks for good night as polling shows him in strong position in three ...

As the Republican candidates play out their presidential nominating bids in three states on Tuesday, predictions are mounting that Rick Santorum will have a good night after pulling ahead in Midwestern polling. But Mitt Romney still has the line on

Why is Obama now supporting 'super PACs'?

President Obama has reversed himself, and is now allowing cabinet officials and senior White House advisers to raise funds for 'Priorities USA Action,' a super PAC. By David Grant, DCDecoder / February 7, 2012 President Barack Obama speaks during a

Three years on, Chrome at last arrives on Android

by Stephen Shankland February 7, 2012 9:40 AM PST Follow @stshank Chrome for Android overlays multiple tabs if you tap the tab button in the upper right. Google today released a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android, a momentous step that

Hackers sought $50000 from Symantec

By Frank Jack Daniel (Reuters) - Hackers sought $50000 from US anti-virus firm Symantec Corp in return for the stolen blueprints to its flagship products under what the company says was a sting operation run by an undisclosed law enforcement agency via

Shoot Your Own Movie With Nikon's New D800 DSLR Camera

The above video was shot by photographer Sandro Miller using Nikon's latest digital SLR camera, the D800. Boasting a 36.3 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, high ISO shooting capabilities, and a variety of high definition video modes, the D800 leapfrogs

Data Geeks, Meet Wolfram Alpha Pro

By Mark Hachman When Wolfram Alpha launched in 2009, its "computational knowledge engine" proved to be a data-driven encyclopedia for the masses. Now, Wolfram Alpha Pro takes the wonkiness a step further. Launching today, the paid service will allow

Convicted SF Picasso thief admits to bicoastal art theft spree

A wine steward who plucked artwork off hotel and gallery walls in a bicoastal spree admitted Tuesday to stealing a $350,000 drawing in New York, resolving charges here after serving jail time in California.

An art-loving thief who stole to decorate his own apartment, according to prosecutors, Mark Lugo pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the New York case.

He admitted he took the pricey sketch by the Cubist painter Fernand Leger from a lobby gallery at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel on June 28 -- one of the New York thefts prosecutors said Lugo accomplished by lifting art off hotel walls and walking off with the works in canvas tote bags. Besides the Leger, he was charged with stealing five works by the South Korea-born artist Mie Yim from another hotel on June 14.

Lugo, 31, is set to be sentenced Feb. 28 to one to three years in prison. His lawyer, James Montgomery, noted that Lugo could get out in less than a year if he succeeds in a boot-camp-style prison program.

Lugo was publicly identified as a suspect in several New York heists shortly after his July arrest in San Francisco. Authorities there said he strolled into the Weinstein Gallery, took a $275,000 1965 Picasso drawing "Tete de Femme (Head of a Woman)" off a wall, walked down the street with the sketch under his arm and hopped into a taxi. Police tracked Lugo to a friend's apartment in nearby Napa County.

At Lugo's own apartment in Hoboken, N.J., investigators then found a $430,000 trove of stolen art on display.

Among some 19 artworks at the apartment was Leger's 1917 "Composition with Mechanical Elements," the Manhattan district attorney's office said. The drawing disappeared June 28 from an employee entrance area at a gallery in the Carlyle Hotel.

Prosecutors have said a search of Lugo's apartment turned up four other pieces -- including a Picasso work -- that may have been stolen from Manhattan venues. But he was charged in New York only with the thefts of the works by Leger and Yim, who's known for her disconcerting images of toy bears and other creatures.

"In an effort to display stolen art in his apartment, this repeat art thief boldly walked out of two Manhattan hotels in broad daylight" with valuable works, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement when Lugo was arraigned in New York last month.

Lugo, a sometime sommelier and kitchen server at upscale Manhattan restaurants, also is charged in New Jersey with taking three bottles of Chateau Petrus Pomerol -- together worth $6,000 -- from a Wayne wine shop in April.

As for the San Francisco charges, Lugo pleaded guilty in October to grand theft. He finished his 138-day sentence on Nov. 21.

Montgomery declined to comment further Tuesday; he has previously said Lugo "had no commercial motive at all" in his actions. Lugo's San Francisco attorney, Douglas Horngrad, has called him "more like someone who was in the midst of a psychiatric episode" than a calculating art thief.

Appellate Court rules in favor of gay marriage in California

A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedents when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

It was unclear when gay marriages might resume in California. Lawyers for Proposition 8 sponsors and for the two couples who successfully sued to overturn the ban have repeatedly said they would consider appealing to a larger panel of the court and then the U.S. Supreme Court if they did not receive a favorable ruling from the 9th Circuit.

"Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted," the ruling states.

The panel also said there was no evidence that former Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker was biased and should have disclosed before he issued his decision that he was gay and in a long-term relationship with another man.

The ruling came more than a year after the appeals court heard arguments in the case.

Proposition 8 backers had asked the 9th Circuit to set aside Walker's ruling on both constitutional grounds and because of the thorny issue of the judge's personal life. It was the first instance of an American jurist's sexual orientation being cited as grounds for overturning a court decision.

Walker publicly revealed he was gay after he retired. However, supporters of the gay marriage ban argued that he had been obliged to previously reveal if he wanted to marry his partner -- like the gay couples who sued to overturn the ban.

Walker's successor as the chief federal judge in Northern California, James Ware, rejected those claims, and the 9th Circuit held a hearing on the conflict-of-interest question in December.

California voters passed Proposition 8 with 52 percent of the vote in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage by striking down a pair of laws that had limited marriage to a man and a woman.

The ballot measure inserted the one man-one woman provision into the California Constitution, thereby overruling the court's decision. It was the first such ban to take away marriage rights from same-sex couples after they had already secured them and its passage followed the most expensive campaign on a social issue in the nation's history.

The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and the Law, a think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles, has estimated that 18,000 couples tied the knot during the four-month window before Proposition 8 took effect. The California Supreme Court upheld those marriages, but ruled that voters had properly enacted the law.

With same-sex marriages unlikely to resume in California any time soon, Love Honor Cherish, a gay rights group based in Los Angeles, plans to start gathering signatures for a November ballot initiative asking voters to repeal Proposition 8.

Supporters and opponents of California's ban on same-sex marriages were anxiously awaiting a federal appeals court decision Tuesday on whether the voter-approved measure violates the civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco considering the question plans to issue its long-awaited opinion a year-and-a-half after a federal trial judge struck down the ban, known as Proposition 8.

The 9th Circuit does not typically give notice of its forthcoming rulings, and its decision to do so Monday reflects the intense interest in the case.

Even if the panel upholds the lower court ruling, it could be a while before same-sex couples can resume marrying in the state. Proposition 8's backers plan to appeal to a bigger 9th Circuit panel and then the U.S. Supreme Court if they lose in the intermediate court, which would likely put its ruling on hold while that process plays out.

The three-judge panel, consisting of judges appointed by presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, heard oral arguments on the ban's constitutional implications more than a year ago.

But it put off a decision so it could seek guidance from the California Supreme Court on whether Proposition 8's sponsors had legal authority to challenge the lower court ruling once California's attorney general and governor decided not to appeal it.

The California court ruled in November that the state's vigorous citizens' initiative process grants the official proponents of ballot measures the right to defend their measures in court if state officials refuse to do so.

While its reading is not binding on the federal court, the 9th Circuit's written heads-up suggests the panel accepted the Supreme Court's interpretation, legal observers said.

Further complicating the 9th Circuit's consideration of the case was a move in April by lawyers for the coalition of religious conservative groups that put Proposition 8 on the ballot seeking to have the lower federal court decision striking down the measure vacated because the now-retired judge who issued it was in a long-term relationship with another man.

Former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker disclosed he was gay and had a partner of 10 years after he retired from the bench last year. Proposition 8's backers have argued that Walker's relationship posed a potential conflict-of-interest and that he should have revealed it before he declared the measure unconstitutional in August 2010.

Walker's successor as the chief federal judge in Northern California, James Ware, rejected their claims that Walker was unqualified to preside over the 13-day trial that preceded his ruling -- the first in a federal court to examine if same-sex couples have a constitutional right to get married -- because he stood to personally benefit from declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional.

The 9th Circuit held a hearing on that question in December. California voters passed Proposition 8 with 52 percent of the vote in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage by striking down a pair of laws that had limited marriage to a man and a woman.

The ballot measure inserted the one man-one woman provision into the state Constitution, thereby overruling the court's decision. It was the first such ban to take away marriage rights from same-sex couples after they had already secured them.

The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and the Law, a think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles, has estimated that 18,000 couples tied the knot during the four-month window before Proposition 8 took effect. The California Supreme Court upheld those marriages, but ruled that voters had properly enacted the law.

University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff said the unique circumstances giving rise to the ban's passage could prompt the 9th Circuit panel to strike down Proposition 8 without addressing if banning gay marriage would be constitutional in the eight other states in its territory.

"The circumstances in California are unprecedented. The state supreme court found marriage equality to be a right of the highest order under the state Constitution, and thousands of couples actually exercised that right before a discriminatory initiative took it away," Wolff said. "The federal courts would do well to focus their attention on those unique circumstances, which would support a ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional while leaving the situation in other States for another day."

Questions arise over Brown appointee

Gov. Jerry Brown's appointee to head the department that oversees banking, financial and consumer regulations in California led a trade association that fought against tighter lending restrictions before the subprime mortgage crisis exploded.

Jan Owen, a Democrat, also is named in a congressional inquiry into whether lawmakers and certain executives received preferential treatment for home loans, although she was not accused of wrongdoing.

Consumer advocates said they are watching Owen's decisions carefully to see how she performs in her role as commissioner of the California Department of Corporations. The Democratic governor appointed her in December to the $143,000-a-year position, and she started in January.

Owen, 59, of West Sacramento, has a long resume in California, including stints in both business and government, but it is her history with organizations that were at the heart of the mortgage meltdown that stands out in a state that has one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the nation.

Owen served as state director of government and industry affairs at Washington Mutual from 2002 until its collapse in 2008, one of the largest bank failures in American history. It was taken over by JP Morgan Chase, where Owen stayed on as vice president of government affairs until 2009.

"It is of concern if a person who takes a job there, at that pay level in particular, has such experience, particularly with the mortgage bankers association, JPMorgan and Washington Mutual," said Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, which advocates on behalf of policies for poor and working-class families.

"These are big institutions, some of which don't even exist anymore because of what they did in the mortgage business, and what they did to California," Jacobs said. "That should be watched very carefully."

Owen declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press for this story, but a spokesman for the Department of Corporations, Mark Leyes, responded to questions by email and telephone. He said Owen's professional background is an asset because she understands consumer issues.

"Understanding these industries and how they function-- and fail -- improves the ability to regulate effectively," Leyes said in an email.

He said the department protects consumers by licensing and regulating the network of financial services and securities businesses, including brokers, dealers, investment advisers, financial planners and lenders. Because Owen "really understands how these complex industries operate, she knows what to look for and how to crack down," Leyes said.

Officials with several consumer groups said they were hesitant to openly criticize Owen's background because they will have to work with her in her new role.

Lawmakers similarly were hesitant because Owen's appointment still has to be approved in the Legislature. Although Owen's appointment requires confirmation by the state Senate, she is allowed to work for up to one year before lawmakers decide.

Some consumer advocates who have worked with Owen in the past praised her, saying she was responsive to their concerns.

Orson Aguilar, executive director of the Greenlining Institute, a Berkeley-based national policy group that advocates for racial and economic justice, said he often found himself on the opposite side of the table from Owen on consumer protection and affordable housing issues when she was an executive at Washington Mutual.

"I think people would be surprised, but definitely she was somebody who was easy to work with and she got it. She just didn't pay lip service, she tried her hardest" to help poor communities, he said.

Before joining Washington Mutual, Owen was executive director of the California Mortgage Bankers Association from 2000 to 2002, where she worked on behalf of lenders on regulatory issues that she now is in charge of enforcing.

Owen was among those who argued against a 2001 bill that attempted to control high-interest predatory lending several years before the collapse of the housing industry, which helped propel the state's unemployment rate to more than 12 percent during the height of the recession.

SB60 by then-Sen. Joe Dunn, a Democrat, would have required lenders to assess whether potential recipients of high-interest, high-risk loans had the means to repay them and required the attorney general to document complaints against lenders.

The bill sought to end the "abusive practices imposed upon a captive market," according to its text.

"These abusive tactics, known as `predatory lending' practices, range from the charging of exorbitant fees and interest rates from those least likely to afford them, to aggressive sales of costly and unnecessary services, to outright fraud aimed at forcing foreclosures and allowing seizures of property," the bill said.

That was 2001, long before most Americans had heard about the complex lending and financial instruments that contributed to the collapse of the housing market and billions of dollars in bank bailouts.

A report that year in American Banker, a trade magazine, notes that a hearing on the bill was canceled and said Owen's office contacted the senator to try to "work with him" on it.

A newsletter for bankers association members from 2001 quotes Owen as saying the legislation and other bills like it would turn lenders away from California, which would lead to complaints that low-income buyers and the elderly could not receive loans.

"There is a fine line between protecting consumers and making the process so cumbersome and risky that lenders will simply do business elsewhere," she said in the newsletter.

Dunn's bill died in committee that year.

The former senator, who is now executive director of the State Bar of California, did not return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Leyes, of the Department of Corporations, said industry groups argued that the law duplicated existing federal regulations, although those did not cap interest rates or fees on loans. He noted that the association did not take an official public position on the bill.

"The industry wasn't supportive of Dunn's bill and similar efforts that year or in that time period. Jan was employed by the association, the CMBA, and she needed to represent their point of view," he said.

Leyes said a similar bill by then-Sen. Carole Migden passed later. The Mortgage Bankers Association also lobbied against that bill.

The association also is listed as an opponent of the California Financial Privacy Act by then-Assemblyman Tim Leslie, which sought to prohibit financial companies from sharing customers' data unless customers opted in. That legislation, AB21, died in a committee in 2002.

The California Reinvestment Coalition is one of many groups that lobbied in the early 2000s for tighter lending standards and more restrictions on high-interest loans. Its associate director, Kevin Stein, said he did not recall whether Owen spoke out publicly against the Dunn bill but said her resume raises some concerns about whether she will be an effective advocate for consumers.

Stein called Washington Mutual a "perfect example of what happens when regulators don't regulate."

"So she's aware of that, and maybe there's some appreciation that she might have for the role that regulations can and should play," he said.

A spokesman for the governor, Gil Duran, said is uniquely qualified to lead the department.

"Jan Owen is a highly experienced and respected commissioner with a deep knowledge of California's complex industries and regulations. Gov. Brown picks appointees based on their qualifications," he said.

Owen's name also is cited in two congressional investigations.

They include a 2009 inquiry into the collapse of Countrywide Financial Corp. as a potential "Friend of Angelo" -- a reference to former Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo, who helped high-profile clients get discounted mortgages.

Once the country's largest lender, Countrywide played a major role in the collapse of the housing market because it aggressively pushed complicated home loans to people with a questionable ability to repay.

An April 2003 email exchange cited as part of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation begins with an email message from Owen to Pete Mills, then-senior vice president of legislative and government regulatory affairs for Countrywide Home Loans.

"Don't forget name and telephone number of the guy for refi for us," Owen wrote.

Mills then emailed another Countrywide executive, asking him or "one of your top people," to help Owen. In addition to noting her government affairs position at Washington Mutual, Mills refers in his email to Owen as "a good friend of Countrywide from her days as executive director at Calif. MBA." A follow-up email urges another staffer to offer Owen a discount of half a percentage point on her loan and "no junk fees."

Leyes said Owen does not remember ever receiving a refinancing offer from Countrywide, and public records reviewed by The Associated Press do not show her or her husband having any loans from the company for the two Sacramento-area homes they have owned.

The report concluded that Countrywide loan officers waived fees and knocked off points for VIP borrowers at no cost, saving them thousands of dollars in deals that were not available to regular applicants. It does not say whether Owen received a loan with preferential terms.

"She didn't seek any preferential treatment even though she may have kind of innocuously asked into the terms that Countrywide provided for a refinance," Leyes said. "What's unfortunate is that that got included in that report back then and it didn't get challenged or corrected at the time."

Owen's name also surfaced in a July 2010 House Ethics Committee investigation that cleared Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Long Beach, of wrongdoing in the foreclosure of her Sacramento home, an action that Washington Mutual later rescinded. Owen was among the bank officials who dealt with Richardson's case.

Before she worked for the trade association and the banks, Owen was chief consultant to the Senate Banking Committee in the Legislature from 1992 to 1995, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Financial Institutions under former Gov. Gray Davis from 1996 to 1999 and acting commissioner from 1999 to 2000, when she left to head the bankers association.

Federal officer wounded in Newark shooting

An off-duty federal agent was wounded in a gunfire exchange at his Newark home early Tuesday, a police spokesman said.

The shooting was reported at 5:53 a.m. in the area of Mayhews Landing Road and Bettencourt Street.

"The federal agent had a confrontation where gunshots were exchanged in front of his residence," police Cmdr. Bob Douglas said.

The agent was hit and was being treated at a hospital for his injuries.

Douglas said he does not yet know which federal agency the man was affiliated with or how badly he was injured.

No arrests have been made in the case and police are still investigating the circumstances of the shooting.