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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

BOSS: MANNING WASN'T TOO MENTALLY UNSTABLE TO WORK

 

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- Pfc. Bradley Manning's former boss says the soldier's mental health problems ideally would have kept him from deploying to Iraq, but the Army needed his skills.

 

Retired Sgt. 1st Class Paul Adkins testified Tuesday he failed to immediately tell commanders when Manning emailed him a picture of himself dressed as a woman, attached to a letter titled, "My problem."

 

Adkins' testimony came during the sentencing hearing for the former intelligence analyst convicted of disclosing reams of classified information through WikiLeaks.

 

Adkins was reprimanded and demoted for failing to take actions that could have prevented commanders from deploying Manning and maintaining his top-secret security clearance.

 

He testified he kept Manning working despite his belief that Manning was mentally unstable.

 

INDUCING LABOR MAY BE TIED TO AUTISM, STUDY SAYS

 

CHICAGO (AP) -- The biggest study of its kind suggests autism might be linked with inducing and speeding up labor, preliminary findings that need investigating since labor is induced in increasing numbers of U.S. women, the authors and other autism experts say.

 

It's possible that labor-inducing drugs might increase the risk - or that the problems that lead doctors to start labor explain the results. These include mothers' diabetes and fetal complications, which have previously been linked with autism.

 

Like most research into autism causes, the study doesn't provide conclusive answers, and the authors say the results shouldn't lead doctors to avoid inducing labor or speeding it up since it can be life-saving for mothers and babies.

 

Simon Gregory, lead author and an associate professor of medicine and medical genetics at Duke University, emphasized, "We haven't found a connection for cause and effect. One of the things we need to look at is why they were being induced in the first place."

 

Government data suggest 1 in 5 U.S. women have labor induced - twice as many as in 1990.

 

MUSK'S 'HYPERLOOP' TRANSPORT IDEA HAS SCI-FI FEEL

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The concept sounds like something from the comic books that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk read religiously as a boy: a capsule that speeds along as fast as sound, carrying people between major cities, never troubled by bad weather or turbulence.

 

If Musk has his way, this will be a reality within a decade.

 

Coming from almost anyone else, the hyperbole would be hard to take seriously. But Musk has a track record of success. He co-founded online payment service PayPal, electric luxury carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. and the rocket-building company SpaceX.

 

On Monday, he unveiled a transportation concept that he said could whisk passengers the nearly 400 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes - half the time it takes an airplane.

 

If it's ever built.

 

His "Hyperloop" system for travel between major cities is akin to the pneumatic tubes that transport capsules stuffed with paperwork in older buildings.

 

In this case, the cargo would be people, reclining for a ride that would start with a force of acceleration like an airplane but smooth out from there.

 

"Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for super fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment," Musk wrote in his proposal, which was posted online at http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop