Nightmare Ends: Passengers Leave Disabled Ship

After five days without power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Carnival Triumph cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 people arrived in Mobile, Ala., to greet a cheering crowd of friends and family members waiting to embrace their loved ones.

Passengers began to disembark the damaged ship around 10:15 p.m. CT Thursday in Mobile, Ala. The last passenger disembarked the ship at 1 a.m. local time, according to Carnival's Twitter handle.

As the ship docked, passengers lined the decks of the ship, waving, and whistling to those on shore. "Happy V-Day" read a homemade sign made for the Valentine's Day arrival and another, more starkly: "The ship's afloat, so is the sewage."

Some still aboard chanted, "Let me off, let me off!" and "Sweet Home Alabama."

The Carnival Triumph departed Galveston, Texas, last Thursday and lost power Sunday after a fire in the engine room disabled the vessel's propulsion system and knocked out most of its power.

After power went out, passengers texted ABC News that sewage was seeping down the walls from burst plumbing pipes, carpets were wet with urine, and food was in short supply. Reports surfaced of elderly passengers running out of critical heart medicine and others on board squabbling over scarce food.

Click Here for Photos of the Stranded Ship at Sea

Passengers said many of the cabins became intolerable with the smell of raw sewage. They were forced to create makeshift beds out of lounge chairs on the ship's deck.

AP Photo/John David Mercer

Girl Disembarks Cruise Ship, Kisses the Ground Watch Video

Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill: 'I Want to Apologize' Watch Video

Carnival Cruise Ship Passengers Line Up for Food Watch Video

"We kind of camped out by our lifeboat. We would have nightmares about Titanic basically happening," passenger Kendall Jenkins told ABC News Radio after disembarking from the ship.

"I am just so blessed to be back home," she added.

Jenkins was one of many passengers that were photographed kissing the ground when they exited the ship.

WATCH: Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill Apologizes to Passengers

Approximately 100 buses were waiting to take passengers on the next stage of their journey. Passengers have the option to take a bus ride to New Orleans or Galveston, Texas, where the ill-fated ship's voyage began. From there, passengers will take flights home, which Carnival said they would pay for.

Inside the buses, Carnival handed out bags of food that included French fries, chicken nuggets, honey mustard barbecue sauce and apples.

Deborah Knight, 56, decided to stay in Mobile after the arduous journey was over rather than board a bus for a long ride. Her husband Seth drove in from Houston and they checked in at a downtown Mobile hotel.

"I want a hot shower and a daggum Whataburger," said Knight.

She said she was afraid to eat the food on board and had gotten sick while on the ship.

Cruise Ship Newlyweds Won't Be Spending Honeymoon on a Boat

For 24-year-old Brittany Ferguson of Texas, not knowing how long passengers had to endure their time aboard was the worst part.

"I'm feeling awesome just to see land and buildings," Ferguson said, who was in a white robe given to her aboard. "The scariest part was just not knowing when we'd get back," she told The Associated Press.

Carnival president and CEO Gerry Cahill praised the ship's crew and told reporters that he was headed on board to apologize directly to its passengers shortly before the Carnival Triumph arrived in Mobile.

"I know the conditions on board were very poor," Cahill said Thursday night. "I know it was very difficult, and I want to apologize again for subjecting our guests for that. ... Clearly, we failed in this particular case."

Luckily no one was hurt in the fire they triggered the power outage, but many passengers aboard the 900 foot colossus said they smelled smoke and were living in fear.

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The computer that never crashes

A revolutionary new computer based on the apparent chaos of nature can reprogram itself if it finds a fault

OUT of chaos, comes order. A computer that mimics the apparent randomness found in nature can instantly recover from crashes by repairing corrupted data.

Dubbed a "systemic" computer, the self-repairing machine now operating at University College London (UCL) could keep mission-critical systems working. For instance, it could allow drones to reprogram themselves to cope with combat damage, or help create more realistic models of the human brain.

Everyday computers are ill suited to modelling natural processes such as how neurons work or how bees swarm. This is because they plod along sequentially, executing one instruction at a time. "Nature isn't like that," says UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. "Its processes are distributed, decentralised and probabilistic. And they are fault tolerant, able to heal themselves. A computer should be able to do that."

Today's computers work steadily through a list of instructions: one is fetched from the memory and executed, then the result of the computation is stashed in memory. That is then repeated – all under the control of a sequential timer called a program counter. While the method is great for number-crunching, it doesn't lend itself to simultaneous operations. "Even when it feels like your computer is running all your software at the same time, it is just pretending to do that, flicking its attention very quickly between each program," Bentley says.

He and UCL's Christos Sakellariou have created a computer in which data is married up with instructions on what to do with it. For example, it links the temperature outside with what to do if it's too hot. It then divides the results up into pools of digital entities called "systems".

Each system has a memory containing context-sensitive data that means it can only interact with other, similar systems. Rather than using a program counter, the systems are executed at times chosen by a pseudorandom number generator, designed to mimic nature's randomness. The systems carry out their instructions simultaneously, with no one system taking precedence over the others, says Bentley. "The pool of systems interact in parallel, and randomly, and the result of a computation simply emerges from those interactions," he says.

It doesn't sound like it should work, but it does. Bentley will tell a conference on evolvable systems in Singapore in April that it works much faster than expected.

Crucially, the systemic computer contains multiple copies of its instructions distributed across its many systems, so if one system becomes corrupted the computer can access another clean copy to repair its own code. And unlike conventional operating systems that crash when they can't access a bit of memory, the systemic computer carries on regardless because each individual system carries its own memory.

The pair are now working on teaching the computer to rewrite its own code in response to changes in its environment, through machine learning.

"It's interesting work," says Steve Furber at the University of Manchester, UK, who is developing a billion-neuron, brain-like computer called Spinnaker (see "Build yourself a brain"). Indeed, he could even help out the UCL team. "Spinnaker would be a good programmable platform for modelling much larger-scale systemic computing systems," he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Machine, heal thyself"

Build yourself a brain

The systemic computer takes its lead from nature (see main story), but so does Spinnaker, an ambitious project at the University of Manchester, UK, to build a one-billion-neuron computer from microchips. The idea is to create a supercomputer that works just like the human brain using the same ARM chips that power most smartphones. The team wants to do parallel simulation of large-scale neural networks using the equivalent of 1 per cent of the human brain's neuron count. They are well on their way: using chips that model 1000 neurons each, their system has created the equivalent of 750,000 neurons. "We're advancing slowly but steadily," says project leader Steve Furber.

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Third Japanese dies after Guam tourist attack

HAGATNA: The death toll from a frenzied attack on Japanese tourists in the Pacific nation of Guam rose to three on Thursday when a man mowed down by the killer's car succumbed to his injuries, officials said.

The attack happened late on Tuesday when a local man drove his car up a pavement near a resort, injuring six, then went on a stabbing rampage after crashing into a convenience store, wounding another eight.

All 14 victims, including an eight-month-old baby and a three-year-old toddler, were Japanese.

The Guam Memorial Hospital said the third person to die was a 51-year-old man but refused to give further details, saying next of kin in Japan were still being notified.

Two women, named in court documents as 81-year-old Kazuko Uehara and Rie Sugiyama, 29, were stabbed to death in the attack, which has stunned the normally sleepy tropical tourist destination.

The hospital said six people were discharged on Thursday and one had been transferred to Japan, with four patients still receiving care at the facility.

Local man Chad Ryan Desoto, 21, was charged over the attack on Wednesday.

Prosecutors allege that after he was arrested Desoto admitted to police that he was intent on using both his car and his knife to hurt as many people as possible.

Desoto's motive for the attack remains unknown.

- AFP/al

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Woman found killed in home of 'blade runner' Pistorius

By Nkepile Mabuse, CNN

updated 3:54 AM EST, Thu February 14, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The shooting occurs in the home of Oscar Pistorius


• South African police say man, 26, was taken into custody


• Pistorius is a double-amputee who ran with the aid of prosthetic limbs

Pretoria, South Africa (CNN) -- A 30-year-old woman was found fatally shot in the upscale Pretoria home belonging to South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius, police said Thursday.

Police said they have arrested a 26-year-old man -- the same age as Pistorius -- in connection with the shooting and that he will appear in Pretoria magistrate court sometime Thursday.

Pistorius, nicknamed the "Blade Runner," made history when he became the first Paralympian to compete in the able-bodied Olympics last year.

Several South African media outlets reported that the woman was mistaken for an intruder. Police Brig. Denise Beukes said she was aware of the reports, but could not confirm them.

A spokeswoman for the track star declined to comment.

A neighbor in the residential community alerted police to the shooting, Beukes said. When a CNN crew arrived, it saw a mortician's van leaving the house.

A pistol was recovered at the scene, police said.

Pistorius, a double-amputee, ran with the aid of prosthetic limbs during the London Olympics last year, the first Paralympian to compete in the able-bodied Olympics.

The runner's legs were amputated below the knee when he was a toddler because of a bone defect. He runs on special carbon fiber blades, hence the nickname.

While he failed to win a medal in the Olympics, his presence on the track was lauded as an example of victory over adversity and a lesson in dedication to a goal.

Pistorius was initially refused permission to compete against able-bodied competitors, but he hired a legal team to prove that his artificial limbs didn't give him an unfair advantage.

He smashed a Paralympic record to win the men's 400m T44 in the final athletics event of the 2012 Games.

The athlete was named one of People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive last year.

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Couple: "Calm" Dorner tied us up in our condo

LOS ANGELES A California couple says fugitive ex-police officer Christopher Dorner tied them up in their mountain condominium and stole their car before the firefight that led to his presumed death.

Karen and Jim Reynolds said at a news conference Wednesday that they came upon Dorner when they entered the condo in Big Bear, Calif. Tuesday, and believe he'd been there as early as Friday.

They say Dorner had a gun but said he wouldn't hurt them.

Play Video

SoCal breathing easier after deadly standoff

CBS Los Angeles station KCBS-TV reports Karen said, "He talked to us. Tried to calm us down. And saying very frequently he would not kill us."

"He was very calm and very methodical," said Karen.

Authorities couldn't immediately verify their story, but it matched early reports from law enforcement officials. Later reports said the incident involved two women from a cleaning crew.

18 Photos

Ex-LAPD cop accused of going on killing spree

The Reynolds said they went to the cabin noon to clean it for rental purposes, and that's when they -- and not two cleaning ladies as had been reported - met up with Dorner, KCBS says.

The Reynolds say he tied their arms and put pillowcases over their heads before fleeing in their Nissan.

Karen Reynolds managed to get to her cell phone and dial 911.

The couple, who said Dorner had his gun drawn the entire time, said they were with the suspect for 15 minutes, KCBS adds. "It felt like a lot longer," said Karen. "I really thought that it was the end."

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Dorner Not IDed, But Manhunt Considered Over

Though they have not yet identified burned remains found at the scene of Tuesday's fiery, armed standoff, San Bernardino, Calif., officials consider the manhunt over for Christopher Dorner, the fugitive ex-cop accused of going on a killing spree.

"The events that occurred yesterday in the Big Bear area brought to close an extensive manhunt," San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters this evening.

"I cannot absolutely, positively confirm it was him," he added.

However, he noted the physical description of the suspect authorities pursued to a cabin at the standoff scene, as well as the suspect's behavior during the chase and standoff, matched Dorner, 33.

The charred remains of the body believed to be Dorner were removed from the cabin high in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear, Calif., the apparent site of Dorner's last stand. Cornered inside the mountain cabin Tuesday, the suspect shot at cops, killing one deputy and wounding another, before the building was consumed by flames.

"We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out," McMahon said tonight, though he noted pyrotechnic canisters known as "burners" were fired into the cabin during a tear gas assault in an effort to flush out Dorner. The canisters generate high temperatures, he added.

The deputies wounded in the firefight were airlifted to a nearby hospital, where one died, police said.

Christopher Dorner Believed Dead After Shootout with Police Watch Video

Carjacking Victim Says Christopher Dorner Was Dressed for Damage Watch Video

Christopher Dorner Manhunt: Inside the Shootout Watch Video

The deceased deputy was identified tonight as Det. Jeremiah MacKay, 35, a 15-year veteran and the father of two children -- a daughter, 7, and son, 4 months old.

"Our department is grieving from this event," McMahon said. "It is a terrible deal for all of us."

The Associated Press quoted MacKay on the Dorner dragnet Tuesday, noting that he had been on patrol since 5 a.m. Saturday.

"This one you just never know if the guy's going to pop out, or where he's going to pop out," MacKay said. "We're hoping this comes to a close without more casualties. The best thing would be for him to give up."

The wounded deputy, identified as Alex Collins, was undergoing multiple surgeries for his wounds at a hospital, McMahon said, but was expected to make a full recovery.

Before the final standoff, Dorner was apparently holed up in a snow-covered cabin in the California mountains just steps from where police had set up a command post and held press conferences during a five-day manhunt.

The manhunt for Dorner, one of the biggest in recent memory, led police to follow clues across the West and into Mexico, but it ended just miles from where Dorner's trail went cold last week.

Residents of the area were relieved today that after a week of heightened police presence and fear that Dorner was likely dead.

"I'm glad no one else can get hurt and they caught him. I'm happy they caught the bad guy," said Ashley King, a waitress in the nearby town of Angelus Oaks, Calif.

Hundreds of cops scoured the mountains near Big Bear, a resort area in Southern California, since last Thursday using bloodhounds and thermal-imaging technology mounted to helicopters, in the search for Dorner. The former police officer and Navy marksman was suspected to be the person who killed a cop and cop's daughter and issued a "manifesto" declaring he was bent on revenge and pledging to kill dozens of LAPD cops and their family members.

But it now appears that Dorner never left the area, and may have hid out in an unoccupied cabin just steps from where cops had set up a command center.

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Obama keeps faith in science and warns of cyber threats

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

"IT IS our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country - the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead."

In adopting the phrase "unfinished task" as a signature motif for his 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama signalled a return to familiar themes. For those who care about investment in science, that was a reassuring message. 

The fight against global warming and the importance of technology to protect national security also got high billing. On the latter, Obama signaled that hacking skills, rather than kilotons, are increasingly a crucial currency, promising a new focus on combating cyberattacks - paralleled by negotiated cuts to the US nuclear arsenal. 

In a combative speech designed to counter Republican opponents who want to cut the budget deficit by curbing spending on Obama's priorities - including education and research - the President made the case for continued investment in innovation.

"Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy. Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer's; developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries ten times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race."

The estimate of a 140:1 return on investment in genomics comes from a 2011 study by the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. While the precise numbers from that analysis have been questioned, the importance of continued innovation to America's future economic competitiveness has been stressed in multiple reports, notably from the US National Academies. 

"Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."

Obama called on Congress to pass new legislation to counter threats from hackers backed by hostile governments. That won't be easy: last year, a bill that would have demanded that companies meet minimum standards for cybersecurity, and report if they are attacked, foundered amid complaints that it would impose large costs on US businesses. 

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16 gunmen killed in Thai military base attack: army

NARATHIWAT, Thailand: In one of the most deadly attacks in Thailand's long-running insurgency, scores of heavily-armed gunmen stormed a southern army base on Wednesday, leaving 16 militants dead, authorities said.

In the unusually brazen early-morning assault, 100 militants, dressed in army fatigues and armed with AK47 and M16 assault rifles, attacked the unit in Narathiwat province, unit commander Captain Somkiat Pholprayoon said.

"Sixteen militants were confirmed dead after the attack," he told reporters at the scene, adding that the military and police were in "hot pursuit" of the 60 to 70 militants who fled the base after the attack.

The government expressed sorrow over the deaths, one of the highest single death tolls in some eight years of violence in Thailand's deep south, but praised the military operation, saying the army have had no choice.

"The government has no policy of using violence to deal with southern unrest but in this incident (militants) attacked the military base," Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung told reporters in Bangkok.

A shadowy insurgency has been fighting for greater autonomy for the country's southernmost provinces since 2004, with shootings and bombings occurring on a near-daily basis.

More than 5,500 people have been killed, both Buddhist and Muslim, in the bloody conflict.

Chalerm, who heads the government's special body in charge of the southern unrest, recently proposed imposing a curfew in certain areas of the most affected provinces.

"If we impose a curfew, then militants will find it more difficult to enter the area," he said on Wednesday.

Religious leaders oppose the move, saying it will do nothing to solve the underlying problems. The Thai cabinet is set to discuss the proposal on Friday.

Critics accuse the government of failing to address the grievances of Thailand's Malay Muslim minority, including alleged abuses by the military and a perceived lack of respect for their ethnic identity, language and religion.

Members of Thailand's security forces are frequently targeted in ambushes and roadside bombs, but organised attacks on military bases are relatively rare.

No military casualties were reported in the early hours assault at the base in the Bacho district of Narathiwat province, one of three Muslim-dominated provinces near the border with Malaysia. An army spokesman had earlier put the militants' death toll at 17.

"We learned of the attack in advance from defected militants," Colonel Pramote Promin, southern army spokesman told Thai television.

He added that a key local leader of the fighters, who wore bulletproof vests during the attack, had been killed in the clashes.

Southern army commander Lieutenant General Udomchai Thammasarorat called for local villagers to stay in their homes for 24-hours, for their "safety and to prevent any confusion during the pursuit of militants", he told broadcaster Thai PBS.

A report by the International Crisis Group on the violence in December said insurgents had grown "bolder and stronger" amid political inaction from successive Bangkok governments.

The attack on Wednesday is "part of a trend" towards bigger, bolder attacks by militants showing a new "willingness on the part of militants to engage the security forces head on," said Matthew Wheeler, an ICG South East Asia analyst.

"The fact that so many militants were killed is very unusual," he said, adding the last time there was such a high death toll was in April 2004.

The ICG report recommended a greater push towards decentralisation and closer engagement with local civil society groups and peace negotiations with insurgents.

It added that the deployment of 60,000 security forces and an emergency decree "have not achieved any appreciable decline in casualties".

- AFP/al

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Not surprisingly, House GOP pans State of the Union

Play Video

Obama: Both parties know sequester cuts "a really bad idea"

It shouldn't come as a shock that congressional Republicans weren't very impressed by President Obama's State of the Union address. 

For his part, the president didn't hide his suggestion that it's Republicans who are resistant to compromise, leading some Republicans to jab the president, particularly regarding his lack of clarity on how he would replace the so-called sequester cuts set to slash defense and domestic spending on March 1.

"What has he done?" asked Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. "He signed the sequester, he agreed to the sequester, he came up with the sequester and then he complains about House solutions to actually try to deal with it. This president is more interested in campaign-style rhetoric than actual solutions."

While many said there is some room to work with Mr. Obama on issues like immigration, and even some gun safety measures, his new proposals on everything from education to repairing the nation's crumbling bridges were panned not necessarily based on merit, but on the president's claim that the new programs would not increase the deficit "by a single dime."

"I think it doesn't pass the laugh test" said the chairman of the conservative House Republican Study group Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. "People realize the President promised to cut the deficit in half and it's more than doubled."

"It's economic fairy dust that this President's working with," added Gardner.

On the president's call to address climate change and become more energy independent, Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., called the president's silence on giving the green light to construct the Keystone XL pipeline to pump oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico "deafening."

Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton, R-Mich., also said "With a stroke of the pen, the president could unleash this $7 billion private sector investment. Yet nowhere in this evening's blueprint for the president's policy vision was this critical middle-class jobs project."

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who is expected to be a key House Republican player in immigration talks as a Hispanic-American from a conservative state, said the president's State of the Union this year was "one of the least inspiring speeches I ever heard him give."

But Labrador said he does think Republicans and Democrats will ultimately be able to come together on an overhaul of the nation's immigration system.

"As long as the president and his party don't draw a red line and say that they have to get everything that they want."

Labrador was less optimistic about gun control. He compared his home state of Idaho with low crime and few gun regulations to Mr. Obama's home state of Illinois as an example of why gun laws aren't necessarily effective.

"It has the most stringent gun control legislation and it has some of the highest crime in the United States" Labrador said of Illinois. "Clearly gun control is not going to protect those families."

And while Labrador said he believes the president cares about the victims of gun violence and their families that attended the speech, he said they should not be used as "political pawns."

Labrador said, however, that as a father of five children he was so upset by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that he could not speak of the shooting for two days. He said "if there's things that we can do to save lives without violating the second amendment I think we should consider it."

Democrats gave the speech high marks. In a statement, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she urged the two parties to work together and said "it is time to heed the President's call for real progress to reverse the rising tide of climate change, enact comprehensive immigration reform, and prevent gun violence."

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