New technology to keep drunk drivers from driving

(CBS News) CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The message from police to party-goers this New Year's Eve is: "Drive sober or get pulled over."

There were nearly 10,000 deaths from drunk driving in the U.S. last year, down 2.5 percent from the year before.

There is now a debate over technology that could prevent drunk drivers from starting their engines.

Meredith and Matt Eastridge, in an undated photo

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CBS News

On October 29, 2010, Matt and Meredith Eastridge were pregnant with their first child, a son.

The same night, David Huffman spent the last two hours of his life getting drunk. He put away the equivalent of 15 drinks, each one recorded on a security camera.

The 25-year-old stumbled out of the Charlotte bar and three minutes later, Matt and Meredith Eastridge were critically injured when Huffman, with a blood alcohol content of .23 and driving 100 miles per hour, hurtled into their SUV.

"I remember saying look at that, look at that car. That was the last thing i remember" before being hit head-on, Meredith said.

Six months pregnant, Meredith lost their baby.

"I think about him every day, how old he would be and what he would be doing," Meredith said.

"There were multiple times in that night this tragedy could have been avoided," Matt said.

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Bud Zaouk is leading a research team creating technology that could help save 10,000 lives a year.

"One is breath-based and the other is touch-based. The idea is to develop a sensor that could detect if anyone is above the legal limit of .08 and prevent them from moving the vehicle and driving," Bud said.

With the touch-based detector, "you press the start button and it starts the vehicle. And it will be a small infrared light that shines inside the finger," Bud said.

The infra-red light looks for alcohol in the finger's tissue.

"Alcohol has its own unique optical signature," Bud said, and if the optical signature registers above .08, "then the vehicle prevents you from moving."

The sensor in the breath-based approach is located around the steering wheel.

"That infra-red light excited the molecules and allows you to find out how much alcohol you have in the breath. It's non-contact, non-invasive," Bud said.

The $10 million funding for Bud Zaouk's project is split between 16 carmakers and the federal government.

However, it's opposed by the American Beverage Institute, which represents 8,000 chain restaurants in the U.S.

The group made the following statement: "Drunk driving fatalities are at historically low levels. We shouldn't try to solve what's left of the drunk driving problem by targeting all Americans with alcohol sensing technology."

Bud Zaouk said the technology still needs work.

"I think at this stage we are probably looking at eight to 10 years, when you would start seeing it inside vehicles," Bud said.

The Eastridges now have a daughter, Sloane. They hope this technology will be standard in new cars by the time she is old enough to drive.

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Clinton's Blood Clot Could've Been Life Threatening

Hillary Clinton's latest health update -- cerebral venous thrombosis -- is a rare and potentially "life-threatening" condition, according to medical experts, but one from which the globe-trotting secretary of state is likely to recover from.

In an update from her doctors, Clinton's brain scans revealed a clot had formed in the right transverse venous sinus, and she was being successfully treated with anticoagulants.

"She is lucky being Hillary Clinton and had a follow-up MRI -- lucky that her team thought to do it," said Dr. Brian D. Greenwald, medical director at JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Center for Head Injuries. "It could have potentially serious complications."

The backup of blood flow could have caused a stroke or hemorrhage, according to Greenwald.

"Imagine this vein, where all the cerebral spinal fluid inside the head and spine no longer flows through this area," he said. "You get a big back up and that itself could cause a stroke. In the long-term … the venous system can't get the blood out of the brain. It's like a Lincoln Tunnel back up."

A transverse sinus thrombosis is a clot arising in one of the major veins that drains the brain. It is an uncommon but serious disorder.

Morne de Klerk/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton Has Blood Clot From Concussion Watch Video

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Hillary Clinton's Concussion: Doctor Orders Rest Watch Video

According to Greenwald, the clot was most likely caused by dehydration brought on by the flu, perhaps exacerbated by a concussion she recently suffered.

"The only time I have seen it happen is when people are severely dehydrated and it causes the blood to be so thick that it causes a clot in the area," said Greenwald. "It's one of the long-term effects of a viral illness."

Drs. Lisa Bardack of the Mt. Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University discovered the clot during a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday.

"This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear," they said in a statement today. "It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established."

Clinton is "making excellent progress," according to her doctors. "She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

Clinton, 65, was hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Sunday. She suffered a concussion earlier this month after she hit her head when she fainted because of dehydration from a stomach virus, according to an aide.

Dehydration can also precipitate fainting, according to Dr. Neil Martin, head of neurovascular surgery at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center.

He agreed that the condition could potentially have caused a brain hemorrhage or stroke and been fatal.

"In patients with no symptoms after many days, full recovery is the norm," said Martin. "However, some cases show extension of the thrombus or clot into other regions of the cerebral venous sinuses, and this can worsen the situation considerably -- thus the use of anticoagulants to prevent extension of the thrombus."

But, he said, anticoagulants can be a "double-edged sword." With even a tiny injury within the brain from the concussion, these medications can cause "symptomatic bleed," such as a subdural or intracerebral hemorrhage.

The clot location is not related to the nasal sinuses, but are rather large venous structures in the dura or protective membrane covering the brain, which drains blood from the brain.

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Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering further complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grow for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area, and officials say doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

The president's allies have been openly discussing the possibility that he may not be able to return to swear in for his third six-year term on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Opposition leaders say a postponement would be another signal Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement.

They believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Ediitng by Kieran Murray and Todd Eastham)

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Talks stall as fiscal cliff looms

WASHINGTON: Two days of last-gasp talks produced no deal Sunday between US political leaders struggling to averting a fiscal calamity due to hit the American and world economy within hours.

Party leaders in the US Senate groped for a compromise to head-off a punishing package of spending cuts and tax hikes that is due come into force on January 1 and which could roil global markets and plunge the US into recession.

Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell warned that, despite through-the-night talks, negotiators were still a long way from success, as they raced against the ebbing 2012 calendar in search of a compromise.

McConnell told AFP he received no response to a "good faith offer" to Senate Democrats and had spoken twice by telephone with his old friend and sparring partner Vice President Joe Biden in the hope of breaking the stalemate.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed that talks were at a standstill, and warned that Americans could ring in the New Year with no deal to avert a budget disaster known as the "fiscal cliff."

"There is still significant distance between the two sides, but negotiations continue," Reid told the Senate, after huddling for nearly two hours with his Democratic caucus on one of the latest December Senate workdays in 50 years.

"There is still time left to reach an agreement, and we intend to continue negotiations," he said, as he ordered the Senate back into session at 11:00am (1600 GMT) Monday, New Year's eve and the last day before the deadline.

Reid said Democrats were unwilling to brook talk of social security cuts.

"This morning, we have been trying to come up with some counter-offer to my friend's proposal," Reid told the Senate. "We have been unable to do that."

The already tense mood on Capitol Hill had soured during Sunday's confusing hours, when some lawmakers tossed out varying versions of what may or may not be in Democratic and Republican offers.

"I'm incredibly disappointed we cannot seem to find common ground. I think we're going over the cliff," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Twitter.

Moderate Democrat Clair McCaskill was also pessimistic.

"This is definitely not a kumbaya moment," she said.

Earlier, President Barack Obama accused Republicans of causing the mess, saying they had refused to move on what he said were genuine offers of compromise from his Democrats.

"Now the pressure's on Congress to produce," Obama said, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that was recorded on Saturday, a day after he expressed modest optimism that a deal could be reached.

Obama said it had been "very hard" for top Republican leaders to accept that "taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit, as part of an overall deficit reduction package."

But Republicans were irked by Obama's tone.

"I don't know if this is the president saying $250 (thousand) or 'Go to hell'," Graham told reporters, referring to Obama's insistence that taxes rise on households income greater than a quarter million dollars per year.

The Senate's number two Democrat, Dick Durbin, said Republicans want the tax threshold be raised to $550,000 per household and that Democrats might counter with $450,000, considerably higher than the president's $250,000.

But Reid warned: "We're still left with a proposal they've given us that protects the wealthy and not the middle class. I'm not going to agree to that"

If no deal is reached, a package of tax cuts for all Americans that was first passed by then-president George W. Bush will expire on January 1.

All American workers will see their own paycheck hit and the broader economy will suffer from massive automatic spending cuts across the government.

Experts expect the US economy to slide into recession if the standoff is prolonged, in a scenario that could cause turmoil in stock markets and hit prospects for global growth in 2013.

The president won re-election partly on a platform of raising taxes on the rich, but Republicans who run the House of Representatives oppose tax hikes as a point of principle and claim Obama is addicted to runaway spending.

Any deal must pass the Senate, before going to the House, where such is the power of the conservative bloc of the Republican Party, it is unclear whether any solution backed by Obama can win majority support.

If leaders fail to find agreement, Obama has demanded a vote on his fallback plan that would preserve lower tax rates for families on less than $250,000 a year and extend unemployment insurance for two million people.

Republicans admitted such an option could emerge on Monday.

-AFP/ac

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YouTube makes brief return to Pakistan after 3-month ban

YouTube blocked by Pakistan

(Credit:
CBS)

YouTube made a brief reappearance in Pakistan yesterday after a three-month absence.

The video-sharing service, which was blocked by that country's government in September, was available to Internet users in Pakistan for somewhere between three minutes and three hours on Saturday, depending on which media outlet one believes. The ban on the site, which has been blocked since refusing to pull a clip that mocks the prophet Muhammad, was lifted then reinstated after it was found to still host "blasphemous" content.

YouTube was blocked in Pakistan on September 17 after the Middle East erupted in protests in reaction to "Innocence of Muslims," a video on YouTube that depicts the prophet Muhammad as a buffoon. Posted in July, the clip by Southern California filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula serves as a trailer for an upcoming movie.

The quick about-face appears to be the result of poor coordination inside Packistan's government. Interior Minister Rehman Malik announced on Twitter that the unblocking of YouTube was imminent. However, after the ban was lifted, government officials soon learned that "Innocence of Muslims" was still hosted on YouTube, leading Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to order his country's Internet service providers to re-block the video-sharing site.

The country has previously sought to block access to YouTube videos, including a clip of a Dutch lawmaker in 2008. In 2010, it also sought a blanket ban on "objectionable content" surrounding a Facebook page called "Post Drawings of the Prophet Mohammad Day."

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Five killed in Oregon tour bus crash

LA GRANDE, Ore. Authorities say five people died and about 20 more were injured in a tour bus crash on an icy stretch of interstate in Oregon.

Police say the bus lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84 in eastern Oregon. The bus crashed through a guardrail and went down an embankment a few hundred feet.

Rescue workers are using ropes to help retrieve people from the crash scene. State police say the charter bus was carrying about 40 people, but they did not say where the vehicle was traveling to or from.

The bus crash was the second fatal accident in Oregon on Sunday morning due to icy conditions. A 69-year-old man died in a single-vehicle rollover accident. CBS affiliate KOIN-TV in Portland reports both the 26-year-old driver, who is expected to survive, and the deceased passenger were wearing safety restraints.

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Hillary Clinton Hospitalized With Blood Clot

Dec 30, 2012 8:11pm

(MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Secretary Hillary Clinton was hospitalized today after a doctors doing a follow-up exam discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago.

She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours, Deputy Assistant Secretary Philippe Reines said.

Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required, Reines said.

Clinton originally fell ill from a stomach virus following a whirlwind trip to Europe at the beginning of the month, which caused such severe dehydration that she fainted and fell at home, suffering a concussion. No ambulance was called and she was not hospitalized, according to a state department official.

The stomach virus had caused Clinton to cancel a planned trip to North Africa and the United Arab Emirates, and also her scheduled testimony before Congress at hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to a U.S. official, the secretary had two teams of doctors, including specialists, examine her after the fall.  They also ran tests to rule out more serious ailments beyond the virus and the concussion. During the course of the week after her concussion, Clinton was on an IV drip and being monitored by a nurse, while also recovering from the pain caused by the fall.

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India gang rape victim dies in Singapore hospital

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Indian gang rape victim whose assault in New Delhi triggered nationwide protests died of her injuries on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, potentially threatening fresh protests in India where her case is a rallying point for women's rights.

The 23-year-old medical student, severely beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi two weeks ago, had been flown to Singapore in a critical condition by the Indian government on Thursday for specialist treatment.

"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4:45 a.m. on Dec 29, 2012 (3:45 p.m. ET Friday). Her family and officials from the High Commission (embassy) of India were by her side," Mount Elizabeth Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement.

Most rapes and other sex crimes in India go unreported and offenders are rarely punished, women's rights activists say. But the brutality of the December 16 assault sparked public outrage and calls for better policing and harsher punishment for rapists.

The case has received blanket coverage on cable television news channels. The woman has not been identified but some Indian media have called her "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure".

"We are saddened to learn that she has succumbed to her injuries, and would like to extend our deepest condolences to her family during this time of bereavement," Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Earlier on Friday, the hospital had reported that the woman's condition had taken a turn for the worse. It said that her family had been informed and were by her side.

T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore, said after her death that the family had expressed a desire for her body to be flown back to India. Moments later, the woman's body was loaded into a van and driven away.

Talking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Raghavan declined to comment on reports in India accusing the government of sending her to Singapore to minimize the possible backlash in the event of her death.

Some Indian medical experts had questioned the decision to airlift the woman to Singapore, calling it a risky maneuver given the seriousness of her injuries. They had said she was already receiving the best possible care in India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has been battling criticism that it was tone-deaf to the outcry and heavy handed in its response to the protests in the Indian capital.

"It is deeply saddening and just beyond words. The police and government definitely have to do something more," said Sharanya Ramachandran, an Indian national working as an engineer in Singapore.

"They should bring in very severe punishment for such cases. They should start recognizing that it is a big crime."

"SIGNIFICANT BRAIN INJURY"

The Singapore hospital said earlier that the woman had suffered "significant brain injury" and was surviving against the odds. She had already undergone three abdominal operations before being flown to Singapore.

Protests over the lack of safety for women erupted across India after the attack, culminating last weekend in pitched battles between police and protesters in the heart of New Delhi.

New Delhi has been on edge since the weekend clashes. Hundreds of policemen have been deployed on the streets of the capital and streets leading to the main protest site, the India Gate war memorial, have been shut for long periods, severely disrupting traffic in the city of 16 million.

Commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration that many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social and economic issues.

Many protesters have complained that Singh's government has done little to curb the abuse of women in the country of 1.2 billion. A global poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in New Delhi and Saeed Azhar and Edgar Su in Singapore; Editing by Michael Roddy and Mark Bendeich)

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The gang-rape on a bus that sickened India

NEW DELHI: After spending her evening watching "Life of Pi" in a New Delhi mall, the 23-year-old student and her male companion were looking for a quick lift home when a bus with tinted windows pulled over.

The pair were then subjected to a catalogue of violence and sexual depravity which has evoked comparisons with Anthony Burgess's novel "A Clockwork Orange" and brought simmering anger over the plight of women to the boil across India.

The Indian news channel NDTV greeted news of her death in the early hours of Saturday in a Singapore hospital with the banner headline "RIP: India's Daughter", in a reflection of how her plight had moved the nation.

Ever since she was attacked on the night of December 16, the country's leaders have lined up to offer their prayers and condemn the attack as well as paying for her treatment in Singapore.

Although the identity of the young woman has not yet been released, reports have said she was a medical student who hailed from a rural area of Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state which borders the capital New Delhi.

Her parents, who had travelled to Singapore after she was flown out by air ambulance on Wednesday night, are said to have sold their small piece of land in order to fund their daughter's education, often limiting their own meals to little more than rotis with namak (bread with salt), according to NDTV.

"These are simple, rustic people, who have never dreamt of boarding an aircraft, much less travel to a foreign country in an air ambulance," a source at the hospital told Singapore's Straits Times after meeting her relatives.

Before flying out to Singapore, the woman had managed to give an interview to police at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital about the events on the night of her attack.

Police and prosecutors have outlined how six men picked the pair up outside the mall in a school bus which they had taken for a joyride after drinking heavily.

Even before they stopped outside the mall, they had allegedly picked up another passenger and then forced him to hand over the contents of his wallet.

After getting into an argument with the woman's male companion, the group are then alleged to have lashed out at the pair before taking turns to rape the woman in the back of the bus while driving around Delhi for some 45 minutes.

They also sexually assaulted the woman with a rusting metal bar, leaving her with severe intestinal injuries, before hurling her out of the vehicle.

The bus would have had to cross numerous police checkpoints at that time of night but at no stage was the vehicle pulled over by officers.

After news of the attack emerged, small-scale protests quickly swelled and were then repeated across the country -- fuelled in part by anger at the police's use of teargas and water cannon.

The Indian government has set up a commission of inquiry to investigate what mistakes were made on the night of the attack and in its aftermath.

But in an address to chief ministers from the country's states who gathered in New Delhi on Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that it was far from an isolated event.

"We must reflect on this problem, which occurs in all states and regions. It requires greater attention by the central government and states," he said.

Gang-rapes happen on such a regular basis that they are rarely reported in the Indian press although the attack in Delhi has led papers to shine a rare spotlight on such attacks.

On Thursday night, it emerged that a 17-year-old girl had committed suicide after police allegedly tried to persuade her to drop a complaint of gang-rape and instead either accept a cash settlement or even marry one of her attackers.

After quoting from the infamous gang-rape scene in Burgess's novel, a columnist for The Hindu wrote this week that "few Indians will need a dictionary of the teenage slang Burgess invented to grasp the horror of this passage".

"For progress to be made, we must begin by acknowledging this one fact: the problem isn't the police, the courts or the government. The problem is us," wrote Praveen Swami.

- AFP/ck

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New iOS app shows NY subway arrival times

Now arriving...

(Credit:
New York MTA)

New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority finally joined the smartphone era today by releasing an iOS app showing train arrival times for seven subway lines.

Available for the iPhone, the
iPod Touch, and the
iPad, MTA Subway Time will display train arrival times for 156 stations on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 lines and the S shuttle line. Though officially in a test version for the time being, the app will use the same arrival times shown on station countdown clocks and on the MTA's Web site.

"The ability to get subway arrival time at street level is here," said MTA Chairman and CEO Joseph J. Lhota in a statement. "The days of rushing to a subway station only to find yourself waiting motionless in a state of uncertainty are coming to an end."

According to the statement, the app can handle up to 5,000 incoming requests per second. The information comes from a feed that can be accessed by developers for other mobile operating systems.

Though the MTA has existing apps for bus arrivals and the drive times on its bridges and tunnels, this is the first time that the country's busiest transit agency has developed an app for subway service.

Via AllThings D

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