MIAMI (AP) -- U.S. forecasters predicted Thursday that this year's Atlantic hurricane season would produce a normal number of about nine to 15 tropical storms. As many as four to eight of those storms could strengthen into hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's initial outlook for the six-month storm season that officially begins June 1. One to three of those could become major hurricanes with top winds of 111 mph or higher. The weather phenomenon known as El Nino, which warms Pacific waters near the equator and increases wind shear over the Atlantic, may develop by the late summer or early fall and help suppress storm development, forecasters said. This season got an early start when Tropical Storm Alberto formed Saturday off ... Continue reading →

Warren Buffett’s letter his editors and publishers Warren Buffett’s letter to his newspaper editors and publishers (via Omaha.com): May 23, 2012 To the Publishers and Editors of Berkshire Hathaway’s Daily Newspapers: Until recently, Berkshire has owned only one daily newspaper, The Buffalo News, purchased in 1977. In a month or so, we will own 26 dailies. I’ve loved newspapers all of my life — and always will. My dad, when attending the University of Nebraska, was editor of The Daily Nebraskan. (I have copies of the papers he edited in 1924.) He met my mother when she applied for a job as a reporter at the paper. Her father owned a small paper in West Point, Nebraska and my mother worked at various jobs at ... Continue reading →

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Police have arrested a suspect in two fatal highway shootings in Mississippi that prompted warnings a fake officer might be pulling over victims.Authorities said early Friday that the fears of an impostor turned out to be unfounded. Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain told The Associated Press that the suspect, James D. Willie, 28, had not been posing as a police officer in the shootings.Willie was being held on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault and rape and would be formally charged with two counts of capital murder, Strain said.Willie was being held at the Tunica County jail in north Mississippi.Willie was arrested Tuesday morning when authorities responded to a disturbance at an apartment. Tunica police found Willie with a ... Continue reading →

RT @monaeltahawy Valerie Jarrett: "Just Plain Wrong: House Republican Bill Undermines the Violence Against Women Act" http://t.co/Y9S1e08I Valerie Jarrett: "Just Plain Wrong: House Republican Bill Undermines the Violence Against Women Act" http://t.co/Y9S1e08I RT @tylerflorence YouTube launching food channel http://t.co/2W3nzufQ Continue reading →

MILWAUKEE (AP) — One of life's simple pleasures just got a little sweeter. After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a big study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn't matter.The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever done on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it's a guilty pleasure that may do harm."Our study suggests that's really not the case," said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute. "There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking."No one knows why. Coffee contains a thousand things that can affect health, from ... Continue reading →

A plume of smoke stretched across the Bering Sea on May 11, 2012, as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead. This natural-color image shows part of the Bering Sea, just off of far eastern Russia. The smoke appears dull blue-gray and darker than the surrounding clouds. The smoke may have arisen from wildfires in the region around Lake Baikal, where numerous wildfires burned in early May. A model from the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory suggests that smoke from the Lake Baikal region would take just a few days to reach the Bering Sea. In a study published in 2004, scientists tracked the movement of smoke from Russian wildfires, finding that it typically travels in one of two directions: northwest ... Continue reading →

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Neither bad weather nor car accident nor even feeling bad could stop Gennesaret Sealy from attending school every single day, nor could they stop her brother before her.Sealy is set to graduate June 5 from Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School in Montgomery with a perfect attendance record since she entered kindergarten 13 years ago. Principal Sylvia Goshton said Sealy has not missed a day or been tardy in high school. School records show she did not miss a day in kindergarten, elementary school or junior high school either.That includes days when she didn't feel like getting out of bed, a time during high school when family car problems forced her to take a city bus to and from school and ... Continue reading →

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Female soldiers this week are moving into new jobs in once all-male units as the Army breaks down formal barriers in recognition of what has already happened in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.The policy change announced earlier this year is being tested at nine brigades, including one at Fort Campbell, before going Army-wide. It opens thousands of jobs to female soldiers by loosening restrictions meant to keep them away from the battlefield. Experience on the ground in the past decade showed women were fighting and dying alongside male soldiers anyway.Col. Val Keaveny Jr., commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team that is among units piloting the change, told The Associated Press that for the last decade it has been common ... Continue reading →

PARIS (AP) -- The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. Greek parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening that comes with international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections there. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity. And France, of course, elected Hollande, its first Socialist president in more than a decade and one who has promised stimulus spending. "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!" he shouted in his first speech after Nicolas Sarkozy conceded Sunday night. The question remains whether Germany agrees - and will allow ... Continue reading →

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An ex-Marine filmmaker whose unit carried pocket digital cameras into some of the worst fighting in Iraq is using that footage, and post-war interviews, to open viewers' eyes about combat and help himself deal with the lasting emotional impact.The videos are stark. One Marine is so badly hurt he filmed himself giving himself the Last Rites.Some of the fighters seem unaffected years later in civilian life, while others have gone through severe bouts of post-traumatic stress and one man, who in Iraq saved fellow Marines' lives, wound up in prison back home.Garrett Anderson hopes to show this all up close with "And Then They Came Home," a documentary he is making from footage he and his comrades gathered on Nov. 22, ... Continue reading →