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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

GOOGLE CONTACT LENS COULD BE OPTION FOR DIABETICS

 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- Brian Otis gingerly holds what looks like a typical contact lens on his index finger. Look closer. Sandwiched in this lens are two twinkling glitter-specks loaded with tens of thousands of miniaturized transistors. It's ringed with a hair-thin antenna. Together these remarkable miniature electronics can monitor glucose levels in tears of diabetics and then wirelessly transmit them to a handheld device.

 

"It doesn't look like much, but it was a crazy amount of work to get everything so very small," he said before the project was unveiled Thursday.

 

During years of soldering hair-thin wires to miniaturize electronics, Otis burned his fingertips so often that he can no longer feel the tiny chips he made from scratch in Google's Silicon Valley headquarters, a small price to pay for what he says is the smallest wireless glucose sensor ever made.

 

The idea that all of that monitoring could be going on passively, through a contact lens, is especially promising for the world's 382 million diabetics who need insulin and keep a close watch on their blood sugar.

 

The prototype, which Google says will take at least five years to reach consumers, is one of several medical devices being designed by companies to make glucose monitoring for diabetic patients more convenient and less invasive than traditional finger pricks.

 

The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google's Web-surfing eyeglasses and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.

 

KERRY: NO RUSH TO DECIDE ON KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Brushing aside pressure from Canada, Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the United States will not be pushed into making a decision on the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline.

 

At a joint appearance with Canada's foreign affairs minister, John Baird, Kerry said he has not received a crucial environmental report on the $7 billion pipeline, which would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.

 

"My hope is that before long, that analysis will be available, and then my work begins," Kerry said, referring to a recommendation he is expected to make on whether the pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. The State Department has jurisdiction over the pipeline because it crosses an international border.

 

Kerry, who has rarely spoken about the pipeline since taking office a year ago, said "a lot of questions" were raised about the project in a lengthy public comment period the State Department conducted. "Those comments have necessitated appropriate answers," he said.

 

The pipeline plan has become a flashpoint in the U.S. debate over climate change. Environmental groups have pressured President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry "dirty oil" derived from tar sands and exacerbate global warming. They also worry about a spill.

 

Lawmakers from oil-producing states, as well as business and labor groups, have urged Obama to approve the pipeline as a source of much-needed jobs and a step toward North American energy independence.

 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT OBAMA'S NEW NSA RULES

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is putting limits on the harvesting of Americans' phone records and seeking revisions to a program that sweeps up email and Internet data around the world, seven months after former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden began divulging the secret spying.

 

Click here to read questions and answers about Obama's plan: