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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

OJ TO GET VEGAS COURT HEARING ON BID FOR NEW TRIAL

 

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- O.J. Simpson will return next week to the Las Vegas courthouse where he was convicted of leading an armed sports memorabilia heist to ask a judge for a new trial on the grounds that his lawyer botched his case.

 

Simpson will take the witness stand to testify that the Florida lawyer who collected nearly $700,000 is to blame for his armed robbery and kidnapping conviction in 2008 and his failed appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court in 2010.

 

Simpson's testimony in open court will offer a first look at the aging 65-year-old former football star since he was handcuffed and sent to prison more than four years ago. Simpson didn't testify at his Las Vegas trial or in the historic case that led to his 1995 acquittal in the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles.

 

Instead of an expensive suit and tie, Simpson will be dressed in blue Nevada Department of Corrections clothing - grayer, heavier and limping a little more from long-ago knee injuries, friends say. He is now Nevada inmate No. 1027820, a far cry from his playing days when Simpson wore jersey No. 32, won the Heisman Trophy, earned the nickname "The Juice" in the NFL and gained induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

 

GREENHOUSE GAS MILESTONE; CO2 LEVELS SET RECORD

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday.

 

Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii which sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

That was during the Pleistocene Era. "It was much warmer than it is today," Tans said. "There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 10 and 20 meters (33 to 66 feet)."

 

Other scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this level of carbon dioxide.

 

The measurement was recorded Thursday. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it's a round number - not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.

 

When measurements of this chief greenhouse gas were first taken in 1958, carbon dioxide was measured at 315. Levels are now growing about 2 parts per million per year. That's 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age.

 

Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm, and they were closer to 200 during the Ice Age. There are natural ups and downs of this greenhouse gas, which comes from volcanoes and decomposing plants and animals. But that's not what has driven current levels so high, Tans said. He said the amount should be even higher, but the world's oceans are absorbing quite a bit, keeping it out of the air.

 

"What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity," said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

 

MORE THAN JUST A MOTHER, NOW SHE'S YOUR 'FRIEND

 

Josh Knoller, a young professional in New York City, spent years refusing his mother's "Friend Request" on Facebook before, eventually, "caving in." Today they have an agreement: she'll try not to make embarrassing comments, and he can delete them if she does.

 

"We actually got into some pretty big fights over this," says Knoller, 29. "I love my Mom to death but she's a crazy, sweet Jewish mother and I was a little worried about what she might post in front of my closest friends."

 

As Mother's Day approaches, 1 in 3 mothers are connected with their teens over Facebook, according to the social networking giant's review of how users self-identify.

 

With more than 1 billion Facebook users, that's a lot of mothers and kids keeping in touch through social media, says Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson, author of "New New Media." "Facebook has been a boon to family relationships," said Levinson.

 

Kelly McBride, an assistant professor of communications at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, says her students who "friend" their mothers keep their Facebook pages benign, using other social media like Instagram or Twitter for the racy stuff.

 

"They may be willing to `friend' their mother, but when they do, they take down the drinking or partying or suggestive photographs," she says.

 

Parenting expert Susan Newman recommends that mothers wait until their children are independent adults before friending them.

 

"Being a friend with your son or daughter on Facebook, to me is synonymous with reading your teenager's diary," she says. "Adolescents are trying to develop an identity and they have so much hovering and helicopter parenting going on, Facebook adds another layer that seems to be very intrusive."

 

But Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Washington D.C.-based Family Online Safety Institute, says he was his daughter's first "friend," a requirement for her to even have a Facebook account when she turned 13, the minimum age allowed by the company.

 

"I promised not to stalk her, but I do need to keep an eye on it," he says.

 

While 13-year-olds are the most likely group to initiate a friendship with a parent, with more than 65 percent of those friendships being initiated by the child, people in their 20s are the least likely, initiating just 40 percent of the friendships with their parents, Facebook says.