Individuality takes center stage at Grammys

Fun. helped break up the sound of dance and electronic music on Top 40 radio with its edgy pop-rock grooves. Frank Ocean made a bold statement in R&B — with an announcement about his sexuality and with his critically revered, multi-genre album, "channel ORANGE." And Mumford & Sons continued to bring its folk-rock swag and style to the Billboard charts with its sophomore album.

They all were rewarded Wednesday when The Recording Academy announced the nominees for the 2013 Grammy Awards.

Those acts, who scored the most nominations with six each, were joined by typical Grammy contenders like Jay-Z and Kanye West, who also got six nominations. The Black Keys' drummer, Dan Auerbach, is also up for six awards, thanks to his nomination for producer of the year. His band earned five nods, along with R&B singer Miguel and jazz pianist Chick Corea.

"It feels like alternative music is back," said fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff. His band's gold-selling "Some Nights" is up for album of the year, competing with Black Keys' "El Camino," Mumford & Sons' "Babel," Jack White's "Blunderbuss" and "channel ORANGE," the major label debut from Ocean.

Fun. is nominated in all of the major categories, including best new artist, and record and song of the year for its breakthrough anthem "We Are Young."

Ocean, whose mother attended the nominations special, scored nods in three of the top four categories. His song "Thinkin Bout You" — which he originally wrote for another singer — will compete for record of the year with Black Keys' "Lonely Boy" and four No. 1 hits: Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," ''Somebody I Used to Know" by Gotye and Kimbra, Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" and "We Are Young" by fun.

Song of the year, too, features some No. 1 hits, including fun. and Clarkson's jams, as well as Carly Rae Jepsen's viral smash "Call Me Maybe." But then there's Ed Sheeran's "The A Team," a slow groove about a homeless prostitute, and Miguel's "Adorn," the R&B singer-songwriter's crossover hit.

"It's like one of those songs that wrote itself and I was the vessel," the 26-year-old said in an phone interview from New York City late Wednesday, where he performed with Trey Songz and Elle Varner.

While Miguel's excited to compete for song of the year, he's more thrilled about his sophomore album's nomination for best urban contemporary album, a new category that recognizes R&B albums with edge and multiple sounds.

"That's a huge complement to say that your entire body of work was the best of the year," he said of "Kaleidoscope Dream." ''That's the one that means the most to me. I'm really hoping maybe, just maybe."

Miguel, along with Gotye, Alabama Shakes and the Lumineers, is part of the pack of nominees who have showcased individuality and have marched to the beat of their own drum in today's music industry.

Though nominated albums by The Black Keys and Mumford & Sons are platinum-sellers, their songs are not regularly heard on Top 40 radio. Electronic and dance music, which has dominated radio airplay for a few years, were left out of the top awards this year. Also, One Direction — the boy band that released two top-selling albums this years and sold-out many arenas — was snubbed for best new artist.

Lionel Richie has one of the year's top-selling albums with his country collaboration collection, "Tuskegee," but he didn't earn any nominations. And Nicki Minaj, who released a gold-selling album this year and had a hit with "Starships," wasn't nominated for a single award.

Jay-Z and West dominated the rap categories, a familiar refrain at the Grammys. Nas scored four nominations, including best rap album for "Life Is Good." Jeff Bhasker, the producer behind fun.'s breakthrough album, also scored four nods.

Swift, who released her latest album, "Red," after the Grammy eligibility date, still scored three nominations, including two for "Safe & Sound" with The Civil Wars. Country acts were mainly left out of the major categories this year, though the genre usually has success at the Grammys. Aside from Swift's pop song competing for record of the year, there is 21-year-old Hunter Hayes, who is up for best new artist against fun., Ocean, Alabama Shakes and the Lumineers.

"I'm so proud to be, as you say, representing country music in the new artist category," said Hayes, who is also nominated for best country album and country solo performance. "I don't even feel worthy of saying that, but it's so cool for me to be able to say that."

Swift hosted the CBS special with LL Cool J and it featured performances by The Who and Maroon 5, who received multiple nominations.

The five-year-old nominations show spent its first year outside Los Angeles, making its debut in Nashville, Tenn., at the Bridgestone Arena. It marked the largest venue the show has been held in.

The 55th annual Grammy Awards take place Feb. 10 in Los Angeles.

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AP Music Writer Chris Talbott and AP Writer Caitlin R. King in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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U.S. and Russia to meet on Syria amid chemical weapons fears

DUBLIN (AP) — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats will hold a surprise meeting Thursday with the United Nations' peace envoy for Syria, signaling fresh hopes of an international breakthrough to end the Arab country's 21-month civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will gather in Dublin on the sidelines of a human rights conference, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. She provided few details about the unscheduled get-together.

Ahead of the three-way meeting, Clinton and Lavrov met separately Thursday for about 25 minutes. They agreed to hear Brahimi out on a path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The two also discussed issues ranging from Egypt to North Korea, as well as new congressional action aimed at Russian officials accused of complicity in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The former Cold War foes have fought bitterly over how to address Syria's conflict, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow of shielding its Arab ally. The Russians respond by accusing the U.S. of meddling by demanding the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime and ultimately seeking an armed intervention such as the one last year against the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

But the gathering of the three key international figures suggests possible compromise in the offing. At the least, it confirms what officials describe as an easing of some of the acrimony that has raged between Moscow and Washington over the future of an ethnically diverse nation whose stability is seen as critical given its geographic position in between powder kegs Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

The threat of Syria's government using some of its vast stockpiles of chemical weapons is also adding urgency to diplomatic efforts. Western governments have cited the rising danger of such a scenario this week, and officials say Russia, too, shares great concern on this point.

On Thursday, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused the United States and Europe of using the issue of chemical weapons to justify a future military intervention against Syria. He warned that any such intervention would be "catastrophic."

In Ireland's capital, one idea that Brahimi could seek to resuscitate with U.S. and Russian support would be the political agreement strategy both countries agreed on in Geneva in June.

That plan demanded several steps by the Assad regime to de-escalate tensions and end the violence that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011. It would then have required Syria's opposition and the regime to put forward candidates for a transitional government, with each side having the right to veto nominees proposed by the other.

If employed, the strategy would surely mean the end of more than four decades of an Assad family member at Syria's helm. The opposition has demanded Assad's departure and has rejected any talk of him staying in power. Yet it also would grant regime representatives the opportunity to block Sunni extremists and others in the opposition that they reject.

The transition plan never got off the ground this summer, partly because no pressure was applied to see it succeed by a deeply divided international community. Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who drafted the plan, then resigned his post in frustration.

The United States blamed the collapse on Russia for vetoing a third resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would have applied world sanctions against Assad's government for failing to live by the deal's provisions.

Russia insisted that the Americans unfairly sought Assad's departure as a precondition and worried about opening the door to military action, even as Washington offered to include language in any U.N. resolution that would have expressly forbade outside armed intervention.

Should a plan similar to that one be proposed, the Obama administration is likely to insist anew that it be internationally enforceable — a step Moscow may still be reluctant to commit to.

In any case, the U.S. insists the tide of the war is turning definitively against Assad.

On Wednesday, the administration said several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

The comments came a day after the United States and its 27 NATO allies agreed to send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria. The deployment, expected within weeks, is meant solely as a defensive measure against the cross-border mortar rounds from Syria that have killed five Turks, but still bring the alliance to the brink of involvement in the civil war.

The United States is also preparing to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida, as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, officials said Wednesday.

Word of the move came as the State Department announced Clinton will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week for high-level meetings on the situation in Syria and broader counter-terrorism issues. She is likely then to recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, according to officials.

The political endorsement is designed to help unite the country against Assad and spur greater nonlethal and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the rebels.

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Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.

Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.

At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley when Typhoon Bopha lashed the region Tuesday, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre said.

Disaster-response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.

About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited the town, said 319 others remained missing.

"These were whole families among the registered missing," Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. "Entire families may have been washed away."

The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha's ferocious winds.

Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging flood waters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.

A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother, meanwhile, went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. "I have three children," she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.

Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.

Dionisia Requinto, 43, felt lucky to have survived with her husband and their eight children after swirling flood waters surrounded their home. She said they escaped and made their way up a hill to safety, bracing themselves against boulders and fallen trees as they climbed.

"The water rose so fast," she told AP. "It was horrible. I thought it was going to be our end."

In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished, mostly in three towns that were so battered that it was hard to find any buildings with roofs remaining, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.

"We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs," Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $4.8 million to help people directly affected by the typhoon.

The sun was shining brightly for most of the day Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soaked clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.

But as night fell, however, rain started pouring again over New Bataan, triggering panic among some residents who feared a repeat of the previous day's flash floods. Some carried whatever belongings they could as they hurried to nearby towns or higher ground.

After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared quickly across the southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and plantations damaged. More than 170,000 fled to evacuation centers.

As of Wednesday evening, the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.

The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III's government to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.

Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region where sprawling export banana plantations have been planted over the decades because it seldom experiences strong winds that could blow down the trees.

A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless.

The United States extended its condolences and offered to help its Asian ally deal with the typhoon's devastation. It praised government efforts to minimize the deaths and damage.

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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.

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Let the debate end: Grammy noms anybody's guess

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — It's a brutal year to be in the Grammy nominations handicapping game.

Sure, there are a few safe bets. Mumford & Sons and Frank Ocean are expected to take a share of nominations when they're announced Wednesday night on national television during "The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!" in Nashville.

And popular songs by Gotye, fun., Taylor Swift and Carly Rae Jepsen may land those artists on the list as well, though Jepsen harbors some doubt her omnipresent song "Call Me Maybe" will net a nod.

"I would be so shocked," the 27-year-old singer said last week. "But this year has taught me to look forward to surprises and just be ready for anything. So, cross your fingers for me."

Viral songs like Jepsen's seemed to be the theme of the year, and with no watershed albums during the nominating period for the 2013 Grammys like Adele's "21" or Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," it's not clear who will turn out as this year's top nominee.

Thus the guessing game.

The Grammy nominations period ended Sept. 30 and three of the year's top four debuting albums — from Swift, One Direction and Jason Aldean — came after that date. Rihanna also released a new album after the period ended. All could have songs nominated, but a popular album is the quickest way to accumulate multiple nods.

Mumford & Sons slipped in just under the deadline. Introduced to much of their burgeoning fan base through a 2011 appearance on the Grammys, the British folk-rock band could return with a flourish after selling 600,000 copies of "Babel" in the first week of release and setting streaming records on Spotify.

And Ocean showed the kind of bravery that might be rewarded by The Recording Academy's voters when he announced in liner notes for his album "channel ORANGE" that he'd had a same-sex encounter, causing an industry-wide discussion of the issue.

Questions surround many of the other artists who might be considered sure bets, however. Gotye should be a lock in multiple categories, but his viral song "Somebody That I Used to Know," featuring Kimbra, wasn't submitted in the song of the year category because of a sample, eliminating one of its most viable prospects.

Others who might be considered possible top nominees like Drake and The Black Keys released their platinum-selling, hit-spawning albums late last year and they'll have to overcome short-term memory issues among voters.

Sean Garrett, a producer for artists like Usher and Beyonce with multiple Grammy nominations, said a lack of clear trends during the nominating period made it difficult to guess going into the show.

"It was sort of an iffy kind of year in my opinion," Garrett said in a phone interview. "I'm going to be honest: I think the politics kind of slowed the music down."

He expects pop stars like Jepsen, Bieber, Swift and Korean sensation PSY to take home nominations, but doesn't see an artist accumulating a high number of nominations. That could leave room for newer acts, including fun., one of his favorites.

"They have a very clever sound," Garrett said. "The lead singer (Nate Reuss) has an amazing, amazing voice. I feel like they just came with something that was a bit different. It was mainstream pop music and it had some edge to it. And there was great songwriting there."

Fun., with their anthemic hit "We Are Young," are among the night's performers, joining Maroon 5, Ne-Yo, Luke Bryan, The Who, Hunter Hayes and others.

"It just feels like we spent the last 12 years pulling back the arrow and this year we just let it go," fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff said. "This last year has been incredible and amazing and hard and I don't even know what it would have been like if we didn't have 10 or 12 years of experience because it still feels like we're learning everything for the first time."

The nominations show is being held outside Los Angeles for the first time in its five-year history. LL Cool J returns, co-hosting the show live on CBS at 10 p.m. EST from Bridgestone Arena with Swift.

It's the first official Grammy activity in Music City since 1973, when the late Johnny Cash kicked off the live broadcast. He'll figure into Wednesday night's as well when Dierks Bentley and The Band Perry pay tribute to the man in black.

"So we're going to do that as a tribute to Johnny, a tribute to Nashville, a tribute to country music, a tribute to being back here," longtime Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich said. "And I think it will be magical."

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AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu contributed to this report from New York City.

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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NASA lost in space, expert panel says

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA is adrift without a coherent vision for where it should be going, an independent panel of space, science and engineering experts says.

But the report by the National Academy of Sciences doesn't blame the space agency. It faults the president, Congress and the nation for not giving NASA clear direction. At the same time, the report said NASA is doing little to further the stated goal of the White House to send astronauts to a nearby asteroid.

Panel member Bob Crippen, a retired NASA manager and astronaut who piloted the first space shuttle mission, said he has never seen the space agency so adrift. He said that includes the decade between the end of the Apollo moon landings and the beginning of the space shuttle program.

"I think people (at NASA) want to be focused a little more and know where they are going," Crippen told The Associated Press.

President Barack Obama in 2010 told the space agency to plan to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 as a training ground for an eventual Mars landing. But the 80-page report from the national academy and its authors say that there is little support for that idea within NASA and the international space community. Also, NASA hasn't allocated much money for it. Nor has it done much to locate an asteroid target. The agency's vague strategic plan avoids mention of an asteroid mission.

Crippen said an asteroid mission just doesn't make sense, technically or politically.

"I hate to use the word credible, but people don't buy it," said academy panel member Marcia Smith, president of Space and Technology Policy Group. "They don't feel that the asteroid mission is the right one."

NASA chief spokesman David Weaver said in an emailed statement that the agency has clear and challenging goals.

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Powerful typhoon kills at least 74 in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — At least 43 villagers and soldiers drowned in a southern Philippine town Tuesday when torrents of water dumped by a powerful typhoon cascaded down a mountain, engulfing emergency shelters and an army truck, officials said. The deaths raised the toll from one of the strongest storms to hit the country this year to at least 74.

Gov. Arturo Uy said rain from Typhoon Bopha accumulated atop a mountain and then burst down on Andap village in New Bataan town in hard-hit Compostela Valley province. The victims included villagers who had fled from their homes to a school and village hall, which were then swamped by the flash flood. An army truck carrying soldiers and villagers was washed away, according to Uy and army officials.

"They thought that they were already secure in a safe area, but they didn't know the torrents of water would go their way," Uy told DZBB radio.

He said the confirmed death toll in the town was likely to rise because several other bodies could not immediately be retrieved from floodwaters strewn with huge logs and debris.

Bopha slammed into Davao Oriental province region at dawn, its ferocious winds ripping roofs from homes and its 500-kilometer (310-mile) -wide rain band flooding low-lying farmland.

The storm, packing winds of 140 kilometers (87 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 170 kph (106 mph), toppled trees, triggered landslides and sent flash floods surging across the region's mountains and valleys.

Two entire provinces lost power and more than 100 domestic flights were canceled. About 60,000 people fled to emergency shelters.

Twenty-three people drowned or were pinned by fallen trees or collapsed houses in Davao Oriental province's coastal town of Cateel, which had the most deaths after New Bataan, Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon told the ABS-CBN TV network, citing police reports.

Some towns in the province were so battered that no roofs remained on buildings, Malanyaon said.

The other deaths included three children who were buried by a wall of mud and boulders that plunged down a mountain in Marapat village, also in Compostela Valley. Their bodies were wrapped in blankets by their grieving relatives and placed on a stage in a basketball court.

"The only thing we could do was to save ourselves. It was too late for us to rescue them," said Valentin Pabilana, who survived the landslide.

In Davao Oriental, a poor agricultural and gold-mining province about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) southeast of Manila, an elderly woman was killed when her house was struck by a falling tree, said Benito Ramos, who heads the government's disaster-response agency.

The other victims either drowned or were hit by trees, he said, adding that the death toll was expected to rise.

While some 20 typhoons and storms normally lash the archipelago nation annually, the southern provinces battered by Bopha are unaccustomed to fierce typhoons, which normally hit the northern and central Philippines.

A rare storm last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless and traumatized, including in Cagayan de Oro city, where church bells pealed relentlessly on Tuesday to warn residents to scramble to safety as a major river started to swell.

Officials were taking no chances this year, and President Benigno Aquino III appealed on national TV on Monday for people in Bopha's path to move to safety and take storm warnings seriously.

In Compostela Valley, authorities halted mining operations and ordered villagers to evacuate to prevent a repeat of deadly losses from landslides and the collapse of mine tunnels in previous storms.

Bopha, a Cambodian word for flower or a girl, is the 16th weather disturbance to hit the Philippines this year. Forecasters say at least one more storm may strike the country before Christmas.

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Associated Press writer Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.

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Swiss spy agency warns U.S., Britain about huge data leak

ZURICH (Reuters) – Secret information on counter-terrorism shared by foreign governments may have been compromised by a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for the NDB, Switzerland‘s intelligence service, European national security sources said.

Intelligence agencies in the United States and Britain are among those who were warned by Swiss authorities that their data could have been put in jeopardy, said one of the sources, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.

Swiss authorities arrested the technician suspected in the data theft last summer amid signs he was acting suspiciously. He later was released from prison while a criminal investigation by the office of Switzerland’s Federal Attorney General continues, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The suspect’s name was not made public. Swiss authorities believe he intended to sell the stolen data to foreign officials or commercial buyers.

A European security source said investigators now believe the suspect became disgruntled because he felt he was being ignored and his advice on operating the data systems was not being taken seriously.

Swiss news reports and the sources close to the investigation said that investigators believe the technician downloaded terrabytes, running into hundreds of thousands or even millions of printed pages, of classified material from the Swiss intelligence service’s servers onto portable hard drives. He then carried them out of government buildings in a backpack.

One of the sources familiar with the investigation said that intelligence services like the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, routinely shared data on counter-terrorism and other issues with the NDB. Swiss authorities informed U.S. and British agencies that such data could have been compromised, the source said.

News of the theft of intelligence data surfaced with Switzerland’s reputation for secrecy and discretion in government and financial affairs already under assault.

Swiss authorities have been investigating, and in some cases have charged, whistleblowers and some European government officials for using criminal methods to acquire confidential financial data about suspected tax evaders from Switzerland’s traditionally secretive banks.

The suspect in the spy data theft worked for the NDB, or Federal Intelligence Service, which is part of Switzerland’s Defense Ministry, for about eight years.

He was described by a source close to the investigation as a “very talented” technician and senior enough to have “administrator rights,” giving him unrestricted access to most or all of the NDB’s networks, including those holding vast caches of secret data.

Swiss investigators seized portable storage devices containing the stolen data after they arrested the suspect, according to the sources. At this point, they said, Swiss authorities believe that the suspect was arrested and the stolen data was impounded before he had an opportunity to sell it.

However, one source said that Swiss investigators could not be positive the suspect did not sell or pass on any of the information before his arrest, which is why Swiss authorities felt obliged to notify foreign intelligence partners their information may have been compromised.

Representatives of U.S. and British intelligence agencies had no immediate response to detailed queries about the case submitted by Reuters, although one U.S. official said he was unaware of the case.

SECURITY PROCEDURES QUESTIONED

Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber and a senior prosecutor, Carolo Bulletti, announced in September that they were investigating the data theft and its alleged perpetrator. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said she was prohibited by law from disclosing the suspect’s identity.

A spokesman for the NDB said he could not comment on the investigation.

At their September press conference, Swiss officials indicated that they believed the suspect intended to sell the data he stole to foreign countries. They did not talk about the possible compromise of information shared with the NDB by U.S. and British intelligence.

A European source familiar with the case said it raised serious questions about security procedures and structures at the NDB, a relatively new agency which combined the functions of predecessor agencies that separately conducted foreign and domestic intelligence activities for the Swiss government.

The source said that under the NDB’s present structure, its human resources staff – responsible for, among other things, ensuring the reliability and trustworthiness of the agency’s personnel – is lumped together organizationally with the agency’s information technology division. This potentially made it difficult or confusing for the subdivision’s personnel to investigate themselves, the source said.

According to the source, investigators now believe that in the months before his arrest, the data theft suspect displayed warning signs that should have been spotted by his bosses or by security officials.

The source said that the suspect became so disgruntled earlier this year that he stopped showing up for work.

However, according to Swiss news reports, the NDB did not realize that something was amiss until the largest Swiss bank, UBS, expressed concern to authorities about a potentially suspicious attempt to set up a new numbered bank account, which then was traced to the NDB technician.

A Swiss parliamentary committee is now conducting its own investigation into the data theft and is expected to report next spring. Investigators are known to be concerned that the NDB lacks investigative powers, such as to search premises or conduct wiretaps, which are widely used by counter-intelligence investigators in other countries.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Fleetwood Mac readies tour and new music

NEW YORK (AP) — Fleetwood Mac is heading back on the road, and that means the top-selling group will release new music — sort of.

On its 34-city North American tour, which kicks off April 4 in Columbus, Ohio, the band will perform two new songs, and it could mean a new album will follow. Or not.

Stevie Nicks recently sang on tracks that Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie worked on, calling the sessions "great." But Nicks also says she's not sure where the band fits in today's music industry.

"Whether or not we're gonna do any more (songs), we don't know because we're so completely bummed out with the state of the music industry and the fact that nobody even wants a full record," she said. "Everybody wants two songs, so we're going to give them two songs."

Nicks said depending on the response to the new tracks — which Buckingham calls "the most Fleetwood Mac-y stuff ... in a long time" — more material could come next.

"Maybe we'll get an EP out of it or something," Buckingham said.

Nicks will continue to record solo albums, though. The group is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the best-selling "Rumours" album, which has moved some 20 million units in the United States. She knows that's not possible again, despite the success of Adele's "21," which has sold 10 million units in America in less than two years.

"This is Adele's 'Rumours,'" Nicks said. "She had a baby, she's going to take a year off to take care of her baby — that's why I never had any kids. She's going to go back and start writing again, you never know what the next record's going to be. Is it going to sell 10 million records? You don't know," she said.

Buckingham said he initially wanted to record a new album, but Nicks "wasn't too into that." But the guitarist and singer knows that new music isn't a priority for the band's fans.

"It wouldn't matter if they didn't hear anything new. In a way there's a freedom to that — it becomes not what you got, but what you do with what you got. Part of the challenge of this tour is figuring out a presentation that has some twists and turns to it without having a full album," he said.

Fleetwood Mac, which was formed in 1967, last released an album in 2003, though they hit the road in 2009. Nicks and Buckingham — who originally joined the band in 1974 as a couple — both released solo albums and toured last year. Buckingham had suggested that Fleetwood Mac tour last year, but says getting everyone to agree was tough.

"If you look at Fleetwood Mac as a group, you can make the case of saying we're a bunch of individuals who don't necessarily belong in the same group together, but it's the synergy of that that makes us so good. But it also makes the politics a little more tenuous," he said. "You can say that not only can it be a political minefield, someone's always causing trouble, right? I caused trouble for years so I can't point any fingers."

The tour also includes cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and will end June 12 in Detroit.

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Online:

http://www.fleetwoodmac.com/

You can follow Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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