Arias Challenged On Pedophilia Claim

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was challenged today by phone records, text message records, and her own diary entries that appeared to contradict her claim that she caught her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, looking at pictures of naked boys.

Arias had said during her testimony that one afternoon in January 2008, she walked in on Alexander masturbating to pictures of naked boys. She said she fled from the home, threw up, drove around aimlessly, and ignored numerous phone calls from Alexander because she was so upset at what she had seen.

The claim was central to the defense's accusation that Alexander was a "sexual deviant" who grew angry and abusive toward Arias in the months after the incident, culminating in a violent confrontation in June that left Alexander dead.

Arias claimed she killed him in self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Today, prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive in questioning witnesses throughout the trial, volleyed questions at her about the claim of pedophilia, asking her to explain why her and Alexander's cell phone records showed five calls back and forth between the pair throughout the day she allegedly fled in horror. Some of the calls were often initiated Arias, according to phone records.

Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Testimony About Ex's Death Watch Video

Arias on Ex-Boyfriend's Death: 'I Don't Remember' Watch Video

She and Alexander also exchanged text messages throughout the afternoon and evening at a time when Arias claims the pedophilia incident occurred. In those messages they discuss logistics of exchanging one another's cars that night. Alexander sends her text messages about the car from a church social event he attended that night that she never mentioned during her testimony.

Arias stuck by her claim that she saw Alexander masturbating to the pictures, and her voice remained steady under increasingly-loud questioning by Martinez.

But Martinez also sparred with Arias on the stand over minor issues, such as when he asked Arias detailed questions about the timing and order of events from that day and Arias said she could not remember them.

"It seems you have problems with your memory. Is this a longstanding thing? Since you started testifying?" Martinez asked.

"No it goes back farther than that. I don't know even know if I'd call it a problem," Arias said.

"How far back does it go? You don't want to call them problems, are they issues? Can we call them issues? When did you start having them?" he asked in rapid succession. "You say you have memory problems, that it depends on the circumstance. Give me the factors that influence that."

"Usually when men like you or Travis are screaming at me," Arias shot back from the stand. "It affects my brain, it makes my brain scramble."

"You're saying it's Mr. Martinez's fault?" Martinez asked, referring to himself in the third person.

"Objection your honor," Arias' attorney finally shouted. "This is a stunt!"

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Martinez dwelled at one point about a journal entry where Arias wrote that she missed the Mormon baptism of her friend Lonnie because she was having kinky sex with Alexander. He drew attention to prior testimony that she and Alexander used Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks candy as sexual props.

"You're trying to get across (in the diary entry) that this involved a sexual liaison with Mr. Alexander right?" he asked. "And you're talking about Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?"

"That happened also that night," Arias said.

"You were there, enjoying it, the Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?" he asked again, prompting a smirk from Arias.

"I enjoyed his attention," Arias said.

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: CERN)

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.

"The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us," Lykken said at AAAS.

Enter the Higgs boson, the particle form of the field that gives mass to several fundamental particles. The Higgs field permeates the vacuum of space, which means the mass of the boson and the stability of the vacuum are closely intertwined. Theory predicted that if the Higgs boson is heavier than about 129 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), the universe should be on safe footing.

But in July 2012 physicists at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland announced that a particle closely matching the Higgs had been found by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The much celebrated particle has a mass of about 126 GeV - light enough to raise fears of instability.

There is still hope for the universe as we know it. Some theorists pointed out that the relationship between the Higgs mass and the vacuum of space depends on the mass of a particle called the top quark. If the top quark's mass is different than we think it is, stability might reign.

There are also anomalies with the Higgs measurement, like the fact that it decays into photons more often than predicted. That hints we may yet find particles from the theory of supersymmetry, which says each ordinary particle has heavier "superpartners". If the Higgs has such a relative, it might save us from destruction. But some of these predicted particles, particularly the superpartners of the top quark, can push the universe back into instability.

The worries may remain unconfirmed for a while. The LHC is shutting down for a two-year break so engineers can prepare the machine to shoot higher-energy particle beams, which are needed to probe for superpartners.

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Del Piero signs for second season Down Under

MELBOURNE: Italian World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero has signed on for a second season in Australia's A-League as his Sydney FC side push for a play-off place.

"I'm very happy about this news," the Juventus and Italy legend told a press conference after agreeing to activate the second year of a reported US$2 million-a-season contract.

"For sure it's a great moment for me, for Sydney FC," he said, thanking the club for trusting him.

The 38-year-old said he would not carry on if he could not play at a high level.

"In my age, I want to be very honest. We have to see year by year."

Del Piero has already scored 11 goals in 18 matches, a record haul by a Sydney FC player in a single season and been a hit off the pitch too, helping to boost crowds, shirt sales and television ratings.

Sydney FC has fought back from the bottom of the league to fifth place -- within reach of qualification for the playoffs, largely thanks to Del Piero's goals.

"We have a good position but it's not enough, we have six games remaining but we have to push our energy to take a play-off," he said.

"We want to improve for the next year and do better and better every week," he added.

The team's charge for the finals gathered steam, with a 2-1 win over Adelaide United following the signing of Socceroos captain Lucas Neill on Saturday.

An early-season collapse was halted by the December arrival of former Australia coach Frank Farina, quickly turning Sydney FC into the form team.

- AFP/sf

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Woman's corpse found in LA hotel's water tank

By Alan Duke, CNN

updated 8:51 PM EST, Wed February 20, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Elisa Lam disappeared from the hotel on January 31


• Canadian's body was found in a Cecil Hotel water tank Tuesday


• Police investigating death

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Tourists staying at a Los Angeles hotel bathed, brushed teeth and drank with water from a tank in which a young woman's body was likely decomposing for more than two weeks, police said.

Elisa Lam's corpse was found in the Cecil Hotel's rooftop water tank by a maintenance worker who was trying to figure out why the water pressure was low Tuesday.

Lam's parents reported her missing in early February. The last sighting of her was in the hotel on January 31, Los Angeles Police said.

Detectives are now investigating the 21-year-old Canadian's suspicious death, police Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.

It was not clear whether the water presented any health risks. Results on tests on the water done Wednesday by the Los Angeles Public Health Department were expected later in the day.

The hotel management has not responded to CNN requests for comment.

Video appears to show four cisterns on the hotel roof.

People who stayed at the Cecil since Lam's disappearance expressed shock about developments.

"The water did have a funny taste," Sabrina Baugh told CNN on Wednesday. She and her husband used the water for eight days.

"We never thought anything of it," the British woman said. "We thought it was just the way it was here."

What she described was not normal.

"The shower was awful," she said. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."

The hotel remained open after the discovery, but guests checking in Tuesday were told not to drink it, according to Qui Nguyen, who decided to find a new hotel Wednesday.

Nguyen said he learned about the body from a CNN reporter, not the hotel staff.

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CNN's Kyung Lah and Irving Last contributed to this report.

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Sequestration could mean across-the-board pain

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - The entire economy is headed for trouble in just eight days -- when massive across-the-board cuts in the federal budget are scheduled to kick in automatically. The cuts were designed to be so deep and harmful, that they would force the president and Congress to find a better way. But they haven't. Just for example, there would be $46 billion cut from the Defense Department and benefit cuts for 4.7 million long-term unemployed.

The FBI says the budget cuts would require all employees, including special agents, to be furloughed for up to 14 days.

Referring to the FBI's top managers, Jan Fedarcyk, the former head of the New York field office of the agency, said: "I'm sure they are most worried about, 'What does this mean in the national security arena?' That's probably at the top of the list, a discussion about maintaining our counter-terrorism operations."

Watch CBS News correspondent David Martin's report on the impact the sequester cuts could have on those who work for the Department of Defense:

Most of the cuts would not take effect immediately on March 1 -- they would be phased in slowly over several months. And they could be avoided if Congress and the president could agree to a deal. But if they can't, the cuts will be painful.

Thousands of security screeners at the nation's airports would also be furloughed. Wait times at the busiest airports could increase by up to an hour.

Boehner, WH trade blame for sequester

Dickerson: Obama has stronger hand in sequester fight
Will sequestration really be that bad?

About 70,000 children would be dropped from Head Start.

About 600,000 women and young children would be cut from a major nutrition program.

Millions of the nation's long-term unemployed would lose an average of more than $400 in benefits.

On the health front, the FDA says furloughs would result in 2,100 fewer inspections of food plants, increasing the risk of food-borne illness. And medical research could be cut by $1.6 billion, slowing progress in the fight against disease, including cancer and Alzheimer's.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would largely be spared. But critics of the whole process say that is a fundamental flaw because entitlement programs are a major driver of the national debt.

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Arias Leaves Stand After Describing Killing, Her Lies

Jodi Arias stepped down from the witness stand today after mounting an emotional effort to save herself from death row, insisting to the Arizona jury that an explosive fight with ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander led to his death, and that her lies about killing him masked deep regret and plans to commit suicide.

Arias, 32, will now face what is expected to be a withering cross-examination beginning Thursday from prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive to many witnesses throughout the trial and who is expected to go after Arias' claim that she was forced to kill Alexander or be killed herself.

She is charged with murder for her ex-boyfriend's death and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The day's dramatic testimony started with Arias describing the beginning of the fight on June 4, 2008 when she and Alexander were taking nude photos in his shower and she claims she accidentally dropped his new camera, causing Alexander to lose his temper. Enraged, he picked her up and body slammed her onto the tile floor, screaming at her, she told the jury.

Arias said she ran to his closet to get away from him, but could hear Alexander's footsteps coming after her down the hall. She grabbed a gun from his shelf and tried to keep running, but Alexander came after her, she said.

"I pointed it at him with both of my hands. I thought that would stop him, but he just kept running. He got like a linebacker. He got low and grabbed my waist, and as he was lunging at me the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot. I didn't even think I was holding the trigger," she said.

"But he lunged at me and we fell really hard toward the tile wall, so at this point I didn't even know if he had been shot. I didn't see anything different. We were struggling, wrestling, he's a wrestler.

"So he's grabbing at my clothes and I got up, and he's screaming angry, and after I broke away from him. He said 'f***ing kill you bitch,'" she testified.

Asked by her lawyer whether she was convinced Alexander intended to kill her, Arias answered, "For sure. He'd almost killed me once before and now he's saying he was going to." Arias had earlier testified that Alexander had once choked her.

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Jodi Arias Describes Violent Sex Before Shooting Watch Video

Jodi Arias Testifies Ex Assaulted Her, Broke Her Fingers Watch Video

Jodi Arias Gives Explicit Details About Doomed Relationship Watch Video

But Arias' story of the death struggle ended there as she told the court that she has no memory of stabbing or slashing Alexander whose body was later found with 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and two bullets in his head. She said she only remembered standing in the bathroom, dropping the knife on the tile floor, realizing the "horror" of what had happened, and screaming.

"I have no memory of stabbing him," she said. "There's a huge gap. I don't know if I blacked out or what, but there's a huge gap. The most clear memory I have after that point is driving in the desert."

Arias said that she decided in the desert not to admit to killing Alexander, a decision that would last for two years as Arias lied to friends, family, investigators and reporters about what really happened in Alexander's bathroom.

During that time she initially claimed she got lost that night while driving to a friend's house and never went to Alexander's home in Mesa,Ariz. She later changed her story and said two masked people, a man and a woman, burst into the home and killed Alexander and threatened to kill her family if she told anyone what happened.

She eventually confessed to killing her ex-boyfriend, but insisted it was self defense.

"The main reason (for lying) is because I was very ashamed of what happened. It's not something I ever imagined doing. It's not the kind of person I was. It was just shameful," she said. "I was also very scared of what might happen. I didn't want my family to know that I had done that, and I just couldn't bring myself to say that I did that."

"From day one there was a part of me that always wanted to (tell the truth) but didn't dare do that. I would rather have gone to my grave than admit I had done something like that," she said.

Arias said that she continued to lie because she figured she would never get caught; she was planning to kill herself before trial.

"I was concerned with how it would affect my family. I wanted to die. I was going to definitely kill myself," she said. "That was my plan. You can purchase different things in jail and I bought a bunch of Advil... and took it all in the next few days so it was in my system. They have razors for shaving, so I got one and took it apart one night with intentions to slit my wrists."

Arias said she balked at slitting her wrists after accidentally cutting herself, but that she still planned to commit suicide sometime in the future. When she told news reporters that "no jury would convict her," she claims she said it believing that she would be dead before they'd have a chance to put her on trial, Arias testified.

Arias said support from the public and her family eventually led her to change her mind.

"My family remained very supportive, and told me 'it doesn't matter what happens, we love you anyway.' I realized even if I told the truth they would still be there and wouldn't walk away," she testified.

"By the time spring, 2010, rolled around, I confessed. I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day and that the intruder story was all BS pretty much."

She said that her testimony today, a third version of events, was the truth.

Arias was arrested a month after Alexander's death, and prosecutors have argued that her behavior during those weeks showed a lack of remorse for the killing and an attempt to get away with murder.

Arias said today that after she killed Alexander and drove away from his Mesa, Ariz., home in a panic, it dawned on her that police would soon be looking for Alexander's killer, and she decided that she would pretend the bloody confrontation had never happened.

"I knew that it was really bad, that my life was probably done now. I wished it was just a nightmare I could wake up from, but I knew I had messed up pretty badly and the inevitable was going to be something I could not really run from," she testified.

"I didn't want anyone to know that that had happened or that I did it, so I started taking steps in the aftermath to cover it up. I did a whole bunch of things to try to make it seem like I was never there," she said.

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Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

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Swimming: Trickett urges healing after "toxic" Games

SYDNEY: Australian swimmer Libby Trickett called for healing within the sport after reports exposed a "toxic" atmosphere at the London Olympics including drunkenness, deceit and bullying.

Swimming Australia has vowed to restore its standing with the public after the country's much vaunted swimmers disappointed at the 2012 Olympics and inquiries into its culture revealed discipline was loose and the squad lacked leadership.

Trickett, who has won four gold medals at three Olympics, welcomed the news that officials would further investigate allegations against the team, including that some athletes misused prescription drugs as a prank in London.

"That issue has been left unresolved and it needs to be dealt with in order for us to move on," she told the Australian newspaper.

"It probably has gone too long without being dealt with. It certainly does need to be addressed because... if we let this one go, it's a precedent for the future."

She said all swimmers had been "under a cloud" because no individuals had so far been named.

"But if names are named, we will need to support them through the difficult times that lie ahead for them -- and they will be difficult," she said, The Australian reported.

"We need to come together again as a team and what better way to do that than by embracing these swimmers?"

Australia endured its worst swimming haul in decades in London, winning just one gold medal, six silver and three bronze for its lowest tally in the pool since Barcelona in 1992.

The lacklustre performance, in which no individual swimming gold medal was won for the first time since the 1976 Montreal Games, resulted in the commissioning of two independent reports released on Tuesday.

They revealed that morale within the swimming team was so low one athlete referred to London as the "lonely Olympics" as individuals looked after themselves ahead of the team.

- AFP/al

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Killing, carjacking spree ends with suicide

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Ali Syed killed three, wounded three during spree that involved carjackings in Orange County, police say


• Authorities: Syed first killed woman at his parents' home, then shot at motorists


• Suspect killed himself after police spotted him north of Tustin, police say

(CNN) -- In the middle of a shooting spree that killed three people and unleashed terror on Southern California motorists Tuesday morning, Ali Syed told one of his carjacking victims to walk away, police say.

"Mr. Syed ... said, 'I don't want to hurt you, I killed somebody. Today's my last day. Give me your keys,' " Tustin Police Chief Scott Jordan told reporters.

According to preliminary accounts from police, Syed, 20, didn't intentionally spare another target.

Police say they believe Syed, a part-time college student, fatally shot a woman at his family's Ladera Ranch home before killing two other people -- including a senior citizen executed outside his vehicle -- and wounding three others as he fired a shotgun at Orange County motorists on the Costa Mesa Freeway and committed three carjackings.

The spree ended when Syed died after he turned his gun on himself as police approached on a road north of Tustin, authorities say.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department says it was called to the Ladera Ranch home, where Syed lived with his parents, on a report of shots fired about 4:45 a.m. PT.

A woman in her 20s was found dead there. Police said she wasn't related to Syed, but they didn't release her name, and they said they didn't know why she was at the home.

Syed left the home in his parents' SUV, police said. About 25 minutes after that police call and 20 miles to the northwest, Syed drove into a Denny's and Big Lots parking lot in Tustin, exited the vehicle and shot a driver in the back of the head, Jordan said.

The wounded motorist -- a man who was waiting for his son to carpool with him to work -- managed to drive away before stopping near an overpass, Jordan said. The victim was being treated Tuesday, police said.

That's when Syed, whose SUV had a flat tire, approached the man he would spare. Syed ran toward the man at a nearby gas station, took his keys and drove the pickup truck away without firing at him, Jordan said.

Syed then drove south on the Costa Mesa Freeway, exited onto a transition road, got out of the vehicle and fired a shotgun at southbound vehicles on the freeway, hitting three vehicles, police said.

One of the freeway drivers was wounded in the hand and face, but investigators don't know whether the wounds were from shotgun rounds or debris, according to Jordan.

Police said Syed then drove to nearby Santa Ana, crashing the pickup into a curb on a freeway off-ramp. There, he pointed the shotgun at Melvin L. Edwards, 69, of Laguna Hills, who was in a BMW at a stop sign.

"Syed ... got (Edwards) out of the car at gunpoint, walked him across the road and executed him -- shot him three times," Jordan said.

Syed drove Edwards' BMW to the parking lot of a Tustin-area Micro Center computer store, where police said he found his next two shooting victims.

Syed shot and killed Jeremy Lewis, 26, of Fullerton, who was in a vehicle in the lot, police said. Lewis had worked at a construction site across the street.

People from the construction site then approached, and Syed shot and wounded one of them in the arm, Jordan said. Syed entered that person's vehicle and drove north on the Costa Mesa Freeway before exiting again.

By that time, authorities had received many phone calls about the shootings, and California Highway Patrol officers found Syed driving at an intersection about 5 miles north of Tustin, Jordan said.

Syed exited the vehicle as it slowly rolled near the intersection, according to police.

"There really wasn't a confrontation at that very end," Jordan said. "As soon as he got out of his vehicle, before it actually came to a complete stop, he shot and killed himself," Jordan said.

Syed was unemployed and taking one class at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, an Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman said.

Police said they're trying to determine what led to the shootings, and that they didn't yet know of a motive.

CNN's John Fricke contributed to this report.

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What's next in the looming budget crisis?

(CBS News) WASHINGTON -- We are nine days from the next national self-inflicted budget crisis: big, across-the-board cuts in the federal budget will hit automatically on March 1. The cuts are designed to be so deep and damaging that they would force the president and Congress to compromise on a better way.

"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," President Barack Obama said Tuesday. "This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again."

Watch: Obama warns of the dangers of the "sequester," below.

Obama wants more tax revenue, but Republicans say no. Both sides say it's up to the other to give in.

There will be a continued effort by the White House to apply public pressure on Republicans to relent. This will be done in public, in events such as Obama's speech Tuesday; it's already been done privately.

Top government officials are warning businesses they could be harmed by these looming spending cuts. For example, last Friday, top officials at the Agriculture Department warned meat and poultry producers that there might not be enough federal inspectors to keep their processing plants open and operating.

These are designed to motivate businesses to plead with Republicans to find another way. For now, Republicans appear prepared to take these spending cuts, because they say they will argue to the public they're more serious about deficit reduction than President Obama.

Obama to GOP: Put away the "meat cleaver"
GOP losing faith on sequester alternative?
With sequester looming, Congress takes a break

There are currently no behind-the-scenes negotiations between the White House and Republicans. Republicans say this is President Obama's problem and that he needs to solve it with new spending cuts, because they refuse to raise taxes again this year.

As for talks, the top aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor joked Tuesday that President Obama has spent more time playing golf with Tiger Woods than he has negotiating with congressional Republicans.

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