The plight of a 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl who got a high-profile lung transplant last week underscored the scarcity of U.S. organ donations, but a new study of a Facebook bump in registrations shows that social media may be key to solving the problem. More than 100,000 people in the U.S. took advantage of a Facebook change last year to allow certain members to identify themselves as organ do...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:42:18 GMT

The Pentagon has moved beyond merely talking about placing women into combat and is actively mapping how, when and where servicewomen eventually will be assigned to far more dangerous duties including, perhaps, special forces operations, senior U.S. defense officials tell NBC News.While the blueprint for dual-gender U.S. combat units continues to be sketched and remains subject to change m...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:14:40 GMT

Earlier action by the United States to arm rebels seeking Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assads overthrow would not have meaningfully slow the violence in that countrys ongoing civil war, President Barack Obama said in his first extensive comments about the situation in Syria.Obama defended his administrations handling of the protracted Syrian civil war following the U.S. governments announcement ...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:14:46 GMT

James Whitey Bulger, already charged with killing 19 people, was accused Monday of emotionally wounding a Boston hitman.John The Executioner Martorano a star witness at Bulgers racketeering and murder trial told the jury that it sort of broke my heart when he learned his pal was an FBI informant.He said Bulger and Stephen The Rifleman Flemmi had been his partners in crime, his best...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:02:33 GMT

Laser-scanning technology reveals that the Cambodian lost city of Mahendraparvata, dating back to a time before Angkor Wat, was much more extensive than previously thought. The latest word about the high-tech hunt for hidden ruins came over the weekend in an on-the-scene report from Australia's Fairfax Media.Archaeologists have known about the Buddhist-influenced city, situated about 25 miles (40 ...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:24:05 GMT

Having a celebrity wear your clothing brand is usually good for business -- get your dress on Kate Middleton, for instance, and you can pretty much expect sales to shoot through the roof. But if your brand is sported by a less-liked celebrity, it can turn into a brand catastrophe.Just ask Ed Hardy, who said having reality personality Jon Gosselin photographed in his clothing led to the brand's dem...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:34:01 GMT

President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart on opposite sides of a civil war but using delicate language about a difference of opinion said Monday that they shared an interest in stopping the bloodshed in Syria, as the White House planned to announce more than $300 million in a new humanitarian aid package to go to the war-torn country and its neighbors.Obama and President Vladimir Put...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:23:10 GMT

People traveling to New York City for Gay Pride events over the June 28-30 weekend are being told to seek advice about vaccination for invasive meningococcal disease, in a report released Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.Doctors from Weill Cornell Medical College and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene are raising the alarm in the article due to a deadly bacterial me...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:12:01 GMT

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. --A single mother who worked briefly at a northeastern Pennsylvania McDonald's franchise is suing the owners after she said she was given a fee-laden debit card and told that she must use it to access her earnings.A lawyer filed a lawsuit Thursday in Luzerne County on behalf of Natalie Gunshannon and other employees, The Citizens' Voice and the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre repor...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:33:32 GMT

The primary compensation fund for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings has garnered upwards of $50 million and received more than 200 applications for payments, according to the funds administrators.The One Fund Boston received 212 claims by the Saturday postmark deadline, with additional applications known to be en route to the funds headquarters in Washington, D.C. in courier mail, accordi...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:27:58 GMT

If you're up to no good in this pocket of northeast Ohio, especially in a witless way, you're risking not only jail time or a fine but a swifter repercussion with a much larger audience: You're in for a social media scolding from police Chief David Oliver and some of his small department's 49,000 Facebook fans.And Oliver does not mince words.In postings interspersed with community messages and...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:11:26 GMT

Bank of America routinely denied qualified borrowers a chance to modify their loans to more affordable terms and paid cash bonuses to bank staffers for pushing homeowners into foreclosure, according to affidavits filed last week in a Massachusetts lawsuit."We were told to lie to customers," said Simone Gordon, who worked in the bank's loss mitigation department until February 2012. "Site leaders r...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:05:57 GMT

A popular blogger and publisher has accused a TSA agent of criticizing his 15-year old daughter for having clothing the agent said was too revealing.On Sunday June 16, Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of the Boing Boing blog, posted that a TSA agent at LAX had "shamed" his daughter, Sarina, for the outfit she wore that day while traveling.Based on text messages he received from his daughter, Frauenfe...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:55:10 GMT

Those friendly, fuzzy Muppets from Sesame Street have helped kids open up about all sorts of serious subjects, from hunger and divorce to military deployment.But theyre now tackling a much more unexpected issue: incarceration.Meet Alex, the first Muppet to have a dad in jail. According to a Pew Charitable Trusts report, one in 28 children in the United States now has a parent behind bars -- mor...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:49:38 GMT

President Barack Obama and key congressional leaders may agree on current national security surveillance policies, but a heated debate is under way outside Congress -- perhaps most fiercely between two former and powerful vice presidents, Dick Cheney and Al Gore. And their rhetorical clash seems to suggest that the national security consensus that has existed since Sept. 11, 2001 may be getting ha...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:21:53 GMT