ASHLAND, Ohio (AP) — A mentally disabled woman charged with shoplifting a candy bar asked to be jailed because three people "had been mean to her" — then went on to tell authorities about her time spent in unfathomably cruel servitude, along with her young daughter, at the hands of three people, authorities said Tuesday.

Michael Hastings, most recently of Buzzfeed but well-known and respected for his reporting in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and elsewhere, had died at the age of 33. According to Buzzfeed, he was killed in a car accident early this morning in Los Angeles.  

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban and the U.S. said Tuesday they will hold talks on finding a political solution to ending nearly 12 years of war in Afghanistan, as the international coalition formally handed over control of the country's security to the Afghan army and police.

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 8 million immigrants living unlawfully in the United States would gain legal status under sweeping legislation moving toward a vote in the Senate, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, adding the bill would push federal deficits lower in each of the next two decades.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill that conservatives saw as a milestone in their 40-year campaign against legalized abortion and Democrats condemned as yet another example of the GOP war on women.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Declaring "the days of Rambo are over," a top general said Tuesday that cultural, social and behavioral concerns may be bigger hurdles than tough physical fitness requirements for women looking to join the military's special operations units.

"It is clear that they do not trust their military doctors," the physicians said.

NEW YORK (AP) — The mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and 15 other cities are reviving a push against letting food stamps be used to buy soda and other sugary drinks.

By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said that an assault it led earlier this month on one of the world's biggest cyber crime rings has freed at least 2 million PCs infected with a virus believed to have been used to steal more than $500 million from bank accounts worldwide. "We definitely have liberated at least 2 million PCs globally. That is a conservative estimate," Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said in an interview on Tuesday. ...

OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The latest possible resting place of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is an overgrown farm field where the normal calm of chirping crickets is being drowned out by a beeping backhoe, the chop of an overhead news helicopter and the bustle of reporters and onlookers.

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The online grocery start-up Webvan may have been the single most expensive flame-out of the dot-com era, blowing through more than $800 million in venture capital and IPO proceeds in just over three years before shutting its doors in 2001. Twelve years later, though, Webvan is rising from the dead - in the form of an online grocery business called AmazonFresh. Four key Amazon. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. foiled a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange because of the sweeping surveillance programs at the heart of a debate over national security and personal privacy, officials said Tuesday at a rare open hearing on intelligence led by lawmakers sympathetic to the spying.

ZARQA, Jordan (AP) — Under the watchful eye of stern-faced American advisers, hundreds of U.S.-trained Jordanian commandos fanned across this dusty desert plain, holding war games that could eventually form the basis of an assault in Syria.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian warplanes struck rebel positions near a besieged military air base and other rebel-held areas in the country's north Tuesday as regime forces stepped up attacks against opposition fighters in the key province of Aleppo, activists said.

By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A trained gymnast whose naked acrobatics and harassment of passengers at a San Francisco public transit station were captured on video and circulated widely on the Internet is facing criminal charges over his antics, authorities said on Tuesday. Yeiner Alberto Perez Garizabalo, 24, was caught on video doing handstands and contortions on turnstiles and front flips off a concrete newsstand - all in the nude - at a Bay Area Rapid Transit District station on May 10. ...

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) — President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other G-8 leaders attempted to speak with one voice Tuesday on seeking a negotiated Syrian peace settlement — yet couldn't publicly agree on whether this means President Bashar Assad must go.

By Jennifer Saba (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth. A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network. Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network. ...

ISTANBUL (AP) — After weeks of sometimes violent confrontation with police, protesters in Turkey have found what could be a more potent form of resistance: standing still.

(Reuters) - General Electric Co joined forces with Amazon Web Services on Tuesday to make a wide range of data on products, including jet engines and gas turbines, available online so they can be analyzed. GE said Amazon Inc is the first online "cloud" service on which it will start creating an "Industrial Internet" to tap a market that analysts say could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade. ...

DETROIT (AP) — In one of the biggest-ever showdowns between an automaker and the government, Chrysler on Tuesday is expected to file papers explaining its refusal to recall 2.7 million older Jeep SUVs that are at risk of catching fire in rear-end collisions.

On the agenda could be the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

By Atul Prakash LONDON (Reuters) - Record prices at art auctions in recent weeks and oversubscribed holidays by private jet are among signals that a stock market slump is approaching, if followers of behavioral finance are to be believed. They insist social mood governs human action, including investment on stock markets, and their theories are gaining ground as tools for financial analysis. ...

(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said U.S. law enforcement agencies made between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for data in the last six months, the latest in a series of disclosures by technology companies since intelligence leaks showed the extent of government data gathering efforts. The company said the requests were made between December 1, 2012 and May 31 this year. "The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations," Yahoo said in a statement posted on its Tumblr page. (http://yahoo.tumblr.com/) Others were made under the U.S. ...

By Richard Valdmanis BOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly 250 people have applied to receive money from a $51 million charity fund set up for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, the fund's deputy administrator said on Monday. Twin explosions at the finish line of the world-renowned race on April 15 killed three people and injured 264 others, many of whom lost legs in the blasts. "We now have 247 applications, and I expect a few more to come in over the next couple of days," said Camille Biros. Applications had to be post-marked June 15 or earlier to be considered. ...

(Reuters) - Apple received over the last six months between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for customer data from U.S. law enforcement authorities relating to criminal investigations and national security matters, the company said on Monday. Microsoft and Facebook Inc published similar data last week after reaching a deal about disclosures with U.S. national security authorities. "We have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data," Apple said. ...

By Joseph Menn and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook and Microsoft have struck agreements with the U.S. government to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive, a modest victory for the companies as they struggle with the fallout from disclosures about a secret government data-collection program. Facebook on Friday became the first to release aggregate numbers of requests, saying in a blog post that it received between 9,000 and 10,000 U.S. requests for user data in the second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data from various U.S. government entities in 2012's second half, involving 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts, the world's largest social network said in a Friday blogpost. The company said it released the information after reaching a deal about disclosures with U.S. national security authorities. (Reporting by San Francisco newsroom; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

By Barbara Liston SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - A judge's decision to sequester jurors for the murder trial of a Florida neighborhood watchman who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in 2012 will slow an already painstaking selection process to find impartial minds amid saturation media coverage. Jury selection in the racially charged case of teenager Trayvon Martin is headed into a second week as prosecutors and defense lawyers on Friday worked to cope with the judge's sequester order and another decision to expand the pool of potential jurors. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - "Tweet", "dad dancing" and "geekery" are three of more than 1,200 new or revised words in the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) released on Friday. The dictionary said in a quarterly update on its website that it had expanded its entries for "follow" (verb), "follower" (noun), and "tweet" (noun and verb) to include social media terms that have exploded in the past six years. According to the dictionary, "tweet" is now a posting on the social networking service Twitter as well as its more traditional meaning: a brief high-pitched sound. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CBS News investigative reporter's computer was remotely accessed by an unauthorized party several times late last year, the news organization said on Friday, citing an analysis by an outside cyber security firm. The review found that Washington-based reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer "was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012," CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said in a statement. ...

By Renee Maltezou ATHENS (Reuters) - Plastered on a studio inside the headquarters of shuttered Greek state broadcaster ERT, a sign proclaims: "The revolution will not be televised." For roughly 600 ERT journalists who found themselves out of a job when the government abruptly switched off the signal on Tuesday, the move was nothing short of a coup. Some defied management orders to leave the building and are broadcasting a bootleg news channel over the Internet in a sit-in atmosphere with conscious parallels to the protests in Istanbul's Taksim Square in neighboring Turkey. ...

By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Gmail accounts belonging to Iranian users have been targeted in an extensive hacking campaign in the weeks leading up to the country's closely watched presidential elections on Friday, Google Inc said on Wednesday. The U.S. Internet company, which described the attacks as broad "email-based phishing" attempts seeking to trick unsuspecting Gmail users into giving up their user names and passwords, said they originated in Iran and appeared to be "politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday. ...

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers described Google's tax affairs as "contrived" in a report released on Thursday and called on the UK tax authority to vigorously investigate whether the company was acting within the law. The parliamentary investigation was prompted by a Reuters report, which showed the company employed staff in sales roles in London, even though it had told lawmakers in November its British staff were not selling to UK clients - an activity that could boost its tax bill substantially. ...

By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in New Jersey on Wednesday unveiled criminal charges against eight people accused of trying to steal at least $15 million from U.S. customers in an international cybercrime scheme targeting accounts at 15 financial institutions and government agencies. U.S. ...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc, the world's No. 1 social network, is adopting the "hashtag," one of the most recognizable features of its younger rival Twitter, in a move to position its Web service as an important complement to television, sporting events and breaking news. Facebook said on Wednesday that it will begin to roll out the feature on its social network, making it easier for users and advertisers to find hot spots of user activity around specific events or topics. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. critical infrastructure - which ranges from telecommunications to water to energy supplies - is not well prepared to handle a destructive cyber attack, the top U.S. general in charge of cybersecurity said on Wednesday. National Security Agency chief General Keith Alexander, making his first public appearance since revelations surfaced last week about U.S. telephone and internet surveillance efforts, made the comments in a statement prepared for testimony before Congress. ...

* Opener allegedly had physical altercation with England player * Warner was fined last month for Twitter outburst (Adds Bailey comment) June 12 (Reuters) - Australia batsman David Warner was dropped from the team's Champions Trophy match against New Zealand on Wednesday for an alleged physical altercation with an England player. The flamboyant left-hander, who was primed to open the batting for Australia in back-to-back Ashes series against England starting in July, has been reported for breaching the code of behaviour. "Warner... ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Worries over hacking and other cyber attacks has pushed aside the euro zone crisis as the top risk for Britain's banks and they must do more to protect themselves, a senior Bank of England official said on Wednesday. Global cyber crime in the financial sector has become a more pressing worry, underlined by a series of cases this year. U.S. prosecutors last month laid out details of a crime ring they say stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from cash machines in 27 countries. ...

By Andjarsari Paramaditha and Amy Sawitta Lefevre JAKARTA/BANGKOK (Reuters) - Government and security officials in parts of Asia have been sending sensitive information and policy documents via e-mail services offered by U.S. web giants, and concerns are spreading that these may have been monitored and collected by the National Security Agency (NSA). The official name cards of several directors at Indonesia's ministry of foreign affairs, for example, give only Yahoo or Gmail addresses, services provided by Yahoo Inc and Google Inc. ...

(Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Chinese businessman to 12 years in prison for selling stolen software used in defense, space technology and engineering with a retail value of more than $100 million, prosecutors said. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware said businessman Xiang Li, 36, would be deported to China pending his release from prison. Li, of Chengdu, China, was arrested in June 2011, in an undercover sting by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents on the Pacific island of Saipan, an American territory near Guam. ...