Americans approve of Obama’s jobs bill

Senate Republicans Tuesday may have blocked President Obama's jobs bill, but a new poll suggests that's not what a majority of Americans want.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents to a survey from NBC/Wall Street Journal voiced their approval when pollsters were told them the details of the president's "American Jobs Act"-- including that it would cut payroll taxes, fund new road construction, and extend unemployment benefits. NBC reports that 63 percent of respondents said they favored the bill, with just 32 percent opposing it.

But the numbers for the bill only spike when Americans learn about its provisions in some detail. When NBC pollsters asked for a simple up-or-down appraisal of the bill, minus any policy details, the same group of respondents expressed less than half the level of support that they later showed. "When asked simply if Congress should pass the legislation or not, 30 percent of respondents answer yes, while 22 percent say no; 44 percent have no opinion," according to NBC.

One element of the bill in particular enjoyed wide support--Obama's proposal to remove tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans. Sixty-four percent of respondents said it is a "good idea" to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Thirty-one percent said it was a bad idea.

The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points is set for release Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. ET.

On Tuesday evening, senate Republicans joined together to filibuster the president's jobs bill--denying efforts to begin formal debate on the legislation even though a majority of senators had already voted to advance the bill in a 50-49 vote.

In time of need, Jordan silent in labor talks

Michael Jordan won six NBA championships and delivered several of the league’s most iconic moments during his remarkable career. The greater the pressure, the greater he played. Even now, more than eight years after his retirement – and more than 11 years after his unforgettable shot over Bryon Russell gave the Chicago Bullsthe last of those six titles – Jordan’s legacy remains as vibrant as ever. This generation’s players still wear his No. 23 jersey, and, yes, his shoes remain among the most popular in the world. He’s gone from the court to the owner’s suite, and somehow he makes more in endorsement money now than he did as a player.

All of which makes it distressing that Jordan has been largely invisible in the NBA’s ongoing labor standoff. He fought in this battle as a player and now he’s on the opposite side as owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. He can offer a unique perspective at the negotiating table – if only he’d take a seat at the table.

The awkwardness of Jordan’s position – many of the same star players his ownership peers are negotiating against are part of his Jordan Brand stable – might have contributed to him distancing himself from the talks. But with NBA commissioner David Stern just cancelling the first two weeks of the season and putting the rest of the 2011-12 schedule on notice, the league would benefit from having Jordan’s presence at any future negotiations. Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said he and Stern will meet with a federal mediator next week – a positive step – but if there’s any one person within the league who can coax the two sides closer toward a middle ground, it’s likely Jordan.

In simpler terms: The NBA once again needs its greatest player to come through in the clutch.

Jordan’s background in the league is as diverse as anyone’s: He’s gone from star player to general manager to owner. He played (and worked) in big markets in Chicago and Washington, and is now trying to make the small-market Bobcats relevant in Charlotte. He entered the league making $630,000 as a rookie and earned as much as $33 million for a single season. He’s the only African-American majority owner in a league predominantly made up of African-Americans.

Royal wedding captivates tiny kingdom

PUNAKHA, Bhutan (AP) — The beloved king of the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan married his commoner bride Thursday in an ancient Buddhist ceremony at the country's most sacred monastery fortress.

King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, wearing the raven crown, came down from his golden throne in front of a huge statue of Buddha to place a smaller, silk brocade crown upon the head of his bride, Jetsun Pema. Monks chanted in celebration as she took her seat beside him as the new queen of the country.

The wedding has captivated the nation, which had grown impatient with their 31-year-old bachelor king's lack of urgency to find a bride and start a family of his own since his father retired and handed power to him five years ago.

Children composed poems, flight attendants practiced celebratory dances and posters of the couple were nearly ubiquitous.

The celebrations began at 8:20 a.m. — a time set by royal astrologers — when the king, wearing the royal yellow sash, walked into the courtyard of the 17th century monastery in the old capital of Punakha and proceeded up the high staircase inside. A few minutes later, his 21-year-old bride arrived at the end of a procession of red-robed monks and flag bearers across a wooden footbridge over the wide, blue river beside the fort and followed him inside.

Singers chanted songs of celebration amid the clanging of drums and the drone of long dhung trumpets. She wore a traditional wraparound skirt with a gold jacket with deep red cuffs.

Inside, the nation's top cleric, who presided over the wedding, performed a purification ceremony for the couple in front of a massive 100-foot Thongdal tapestry of Bhutan's 17th century founder, the monk-king Zhabdrung.

The pair then proceeded to the temple for a ceremony broadcast live on national television, save for a few minutes when the king, his father and the cleric, known as the Je Khenpo, entered the sacred tomb of Zhabdrung, where only they are allowed.

The king's father then gave the bride an array of five colored scarves representing blessings from the tomb. Hesitantly, she then approached the king's throne with a golden chalice filled with the ambrosia of eternal life. They held it together for several seconds and then he drank.

The king, wearing his red Raven Crown, with an image of the protector bird rising from the top, came down from the throne and placed a smaller crown on her head. After she took her place as queen, the newly married couple was feted by monks playing deep tones on traditional trumpets and pounding drums.

The Je Khenpo presented them a series of gifts — a mirror, curd, grass, a conch — representing blessings for longevity, wisdom, purity and other well wishes.

Unlike this year's other royal wedding — that of Britain's William and Kate — there were no foreign princes, no visiting heads of state, no global celebrities. Just the royal family, thousands of nearby villagers gathered at a nearby field waiting for the royal couple to celebrate with them and the rest of the country's 700,000 people watching live on TV.

"The whole theme of the wedding was to keep it a simple family affair, that is the Bhutanese family," said Kinley Dorji, Bhutan's secretary of information.

The Oxford-educated king is adored for pushing development and ushering in democratic reforms that established a constitutional monarchy and legislature in 2008. His teen-idol looks — slicked back hair, long sideburns — his penchant for evening bike rides through the streets and his reputation as a laid-back, accessible leader, also make him the rare monarch whose picture adorns the bedroom walls of teenage girls.

His bride, the daughter of a pilot, has been on an introductory tour of the remote villages of the nation since the king told Parliament in May, "It's now time for me to marry."

The remote nation began slowly opening up to the rest of the world in the 1960s. Foreigners and the international media were first admitted in 1974. Television finally arrived in 1999.

The country has not had a royal wedding since the fourth king held a mass ceremony in 1988 with his four wives — four sisters whom he had informally married years earlier. The current king says he will take only one wife, so the country is unlikely to see another such celebration for a long time.

China's soaring new skyscraper

REFILE - CLARIFYING CAPTION The newly inaugurated skyscraper tower of Huaxi village is seen in Huaxi village, Jiangsu province, October 7, 2011. Huaxi, also know as China's richest village, celebrates its 50th anniversary with the inauguration of a massive 328-meters (1,076 feet) high skyscraper that screams for attention from its lowly skyline. A solid gold bull weighing a tonne also greets visitors at a viewing area on the 60th-floor of the tower, a testament to the wealth of the village. In Huaxi, those from the original 2,000 residents have at least a house, a car, and $250,000 in the bank and enjoy universal health care and free education. Officials from elsewhere in China tour Huaxi to find out how this once sleepy village, with just 576 residents in the 1950s, is now so rich and why non-local businessmen would donate million-dollar factories to buy the privilege of a local residence permit. Picture take on October 7, 2011. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (CHINA - Tags: ANNIVERSARY BUSINESS SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY WEALTH)

Sea Monster Possibly Discovered

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. [Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology]

There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence.

McMenamin presented his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Cause of death

Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales.

McMenamin was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, with more recent work on the rocks around the fossils by Jennifer Hogler, then at the University of California Museum of Paleontoloy, suggesting they died in a deepwater environment. [See image of kraken's lair]

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones."

The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus.

The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin.

The arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast.

The perfect crime?

Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks.

"It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said.

So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers.

With such circumstanial evidence of "the crime," McMenamin expects his interpretation will draw skeptics. And, in fact, it has. Brian Switek, a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum, writing for Wired.com, is extremely skeptical, writing, "The McMenamins' entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a 'midden' by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long" (McMenamin worked with his wife, Dianna Schulte McMenamin on the study.)

As for how McMenamin would respond to critics: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case," he said.

Champ defends belt against nemesis

Edgar then dove on top and brutally finished Maynard with a series of ground strikes – which Maynard couldn’t do to him in the first round of either of their two championship fights – to retain the belt. Referee Josh Rosenthal jumped in to stop it at 3:54 as Edgar won the final fight of their trilogy to keep the lightweight belt.

It was a dramatic turnaround for Edgar, who looked like he was on the verge of being finished early. Edgar ended the fight with his left eye virtually closed and blood pouring from his nose and mouth.

The main event was one of two title fights on a stacked card that featured some of the UFC’s biggest names.

The co-main event, a featherweight title bout between Jose Aldo Jr. and Kenny Florian, didn’t bring anyone out of their seats. Aldo wasn’t spectacular and he did not have any devastating strikes. But he did enough to hold on to his belt in a grueling unanimous decision victory over Florian.

Domestic abuse no longer a crime?

A bitter argument over money in Topeka, Kan., means that city and county authorities have neglected to prosecute or charge people suspected of domestic battery since Sept. 8.

In other words, the local justice system has spent a month effectively sending the message that misdemeanor domestic assault will go unpunished--at least for now.

The dispute started last month, when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut to his office in 2012 meant he would no longer be prosecuting any of the city's misdemeanors, effective immediately. Topeka city council members say they can't afford the estimated $800,000 yearly cost of prosecuting those misdemeanors and jailing offenders--and that they want the county to continue carrying out misdemeanor prosecutions as it has for the past 25 years. The county continues to insist that the jurisdiction for these prosecutions should shift to city prosecutors, but the Topeka City Council says that none of the city's five attorneys has any recent experience prosecuting domestic violence cases.

Next week, the council will vote on a measure that will strip domestic battery from a list of crimes that are illegal in the city. The vote is a tactical bid to force the county to take those cases on again.

City Council member Larry Wolgast told The Lookout he's opposed to that tactic, since there's no guarantee that the county will actually prosecute domestic battery cases just because the city decriminalizes the offense. But Wolgast also says the city cannot find the money to prosecute the cases themselves. "If we could just solve this by taking them over, that would be great to do. But the people aren't there," he said. He added that the most severe cases of domestic battery would be written up as felonies, which are still prosecuted by the county.

Karen Hiller, another City Council member, tells The Lookout that the county already has the resources needed to prosecute these kind of cases, while the city--which doesn't even have its own jail--would have to build from the ground up. Taylor would need an extra $200,000 to continue prosecuting them, while the city would have to spend nearly $1 million.

"How could we possibly do this on 10 minutes notice?" she said.

A domestic abuse survivor and activist, Claudine Dombrowski, told Fox4 that the city is sending the message that it's OK to beat your wife or husband.

"They need to invest in headstones, because these women are going to end up in cemeteries," Dombrowski told the station. She said she was hit with a crowbar in a domestic violence incident classified as a misdemeanor 16 years ago.

Wolgast says he's not sure when the jurisdictional dispute will end. When asked to address potential victims of domestic abuse whose perpetrators are not being prosecuted, he said: "We're working to solve the situation. I don't know what more I can say at this point."

According to James Anderson at the Topeka Police Department, city authorities have arrested 20 people on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic battery since Sept. 8. Anderson said he doesn't know how many were charged, but Shawnee County court data suggests that all of the suspected offenders were released and not charged. One man was arrested twice over the month, both times on suspected domestic battery, and released both times. Their cases will be brought up for prosecution again once the city and county resolve their dispute, according to Hiller.

In Kansas, domestic battery is defined as "intentionally or recklessly causing bodily harm by a family or household member against a family or household member," or intentionally physically contacting a family member in a "rude, insulting or angry manner." The third time someone is convicted of domestic battery within five years, the offense becomes a felony.