MyFOX8.com reports that a man wearing what was referred to by witnesses as a "white ninja suit" crashed a car into Apple's Friendly Center retail store in Greensboro, North Carolina this morning. The incident appears to have been a robbery attempt, although the man reportedly fled the scene without stealing anything.

Police described the suspect as a white male wearing a white shirt and hooded mask. According to 107.5 KZL, a security guard said the suspect was wearing a white ninja suit.

'White Ninja' Steals Car, Smashes Into Greensboro Apple Store

Mocked Meteorologist Gets Last Laugh

Piers Corbyn - UK astrophysicist-meteorologist weather prediction more accurate than govt predection

In a post titled 'The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time' this morning on The Huffington Post, Senator Al Franken lays down a powerful case for net neutrality, as well as a grim scenario if the current draft regulations being considered by the FCC are accepted. Quoting: 'The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing. That's why Tuesday is such an important day. The FCC will be meeting to discuss those regulations, and we must make sure that its members understand that allowing corporations to control the Internet is simply unacceptable. Although Chairman Genachowski's draft Order has not been made public, early reports make clear that it falls far short of protecting net neutrality.'"

The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time

The eclipse will actually begin when the moon enters the faint outer portion, or penumbra, of the Earth's shadow a little over an hour before it begins moving into the umbra. The penumbra, however, is all but invisible to the eye until the moon becomes deeply immersed in it. Sharp-eyed viewers may get their first glimpse of the penumbra as a faint smudge on the left part of the moon's disk at or around 6:15 UT (on Dec. 21) which corresponds to 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time or 10:15 p.m. Pacific Time (on Dec. 20).
The most noticeable part of this eclipse will come when the moon begins to enter the Earth's dark inner shadow (called the umbra). A small scallop of darkness will begin to appear on the moon's left edge at 6:33 UT (on Dec. 21) corresponding to 1:33 a.m. EST or 10:33 p.m. PST (on Dec. 20).

The moon is expected to take 3 hours and 28 minutes to pass completely through the umbra.
The total phase of the eclipse will last 72 minutes beginning at 7:41 UT (on Dec. 21), corresponding to 2:41 a.m. EST or 11:41 p.m. PST (on Dec. 20).

At the moment of mid-totality (8:17 UT/3:17 a.m. EST/12:17 a.m. PST), the moon will stand directly overhead from a point in the North Pacific Ocean about 800 miles (1,300 km) west of La Paz, Mexico.
The moon will pass entirely out of the Earth's umbra at 10:01 UT/5:01 a.m. EST/2:01 a.m. PST and the last evidence of the penumbra should vanish about 15 or 20 minutes later.

Amazing Spectacle: Total Lunar Eclipse Monday Night

Behold the U.S.’s new counterinsurgency tool in Afghanistan: the M1 Abrams tank, your ultimate in 30-year old precision firepower.

Increasingly distant are the days when Defense Secretary Robert Gates worried aloud about replicating the Soviet Union’s failed heavy footprint in Afghanistan. Under the command of General David Petraeus, the military’s leading advocate of counterinsurgency, an unconventional war is looking surprisingly conventional.

NATO planes are dropping more bombs than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Special Forces have been operating on a tear since the summer, to the point where Afghanistan’s president is saying enough is enough. The coalition is using massive surface-to-surface missiles to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar. And now the tanks are rolling in.

What do the tanks add to the fight? There’s some attempt at spinning their 120-millimeter guns as precision weapons, but one military official bluntly tells Chandrasekaran, “the tanks bring awe, shock and firepower.” Because “shock and awe” always works.

120 MM Diplomacy: Shock and Awe

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- A federal judge pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of drug possession and another charge, admitting he had paid a stripper to buy drugs for the two to use together. Senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp Jr. admitted to giving money to a woman to buy drugs, according to prosecutors.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of drug possession, federal prosecutors said. He also pleaded guilty to one count of conversion of government property for giving the woman a government-issued laptop.
As part of a plea deal, Camp did not plead guilty to a firearms possession charge included in the initial federal complaint.

Federal judge pleads guilty to drug charges

(CNN) -- Swedish mountaineer and professional skier Fredrik Ericsson died Friday while trying to summit K2 in Pakistan, his friend David Schipper told CNN in a telephone interview.

The incident occurred between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. as Ericsson was attempting to become the first man to ski from the summit to base camp, said Schipper, who said he learned of the accident on the world's second-tallest peak in a satellite call from fellow climber Fabrizio Zangrilli.

Ericsson, in his mid-30s, was at a place called the bottleneck, at an altitude of around 8,300 meters (27,231 feet), between Camp 4 (8,000 meters) and the summit (8,611 meters), said Schipper, a Moab, Utah-based climber. He described the bottleneck as a "steep and narrow section with thousands of meters of exposure below."

Skier Fredrik Ericsson dies in accident on K2

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The parent company of Irish beer icon Guinness announced Monday it may change or abandon plans to reform production in Ireland and open a new state-of-the-art brewery because of the struggling global economy.
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Diageo had planned by 2013 to cut Guinness' brewing staff in Ireland by more than half, shut two breweries in the towns of Dundalk and Kilkenny, and reduce Guinness production at its Dublin brewery, one of Ireland's premier tourist attractions with a heritage dating back to 1759.
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Diageo's major brewing competitor in Ireland, Heineken NV of the Netherlands, last month announced it was closing a brewery that for 210 years has produced Beamish, a local competitor to Guinness, in the southwest Irish city of Cork.

Plans for shake-up of Guinness brewing put on hold

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi Cabinet on Sunday approved a security pact that would set the terms for U.S. troops in Iraq.

The agreement sets June 30, 2009, as the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

The date for all troops to leave Iraq will be December 31, 2011, he said.

Iraq's Cabinet approves U.S. security pact

The Americans learned one lesson from Vietnam: don't count the civilian dead. As a result, no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed in the five years since the invasion. Estimates put the toll at between 100,000 and one million, and now a bitter war of numbers is raging. Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report
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Finally, they point out that more recent data confirm their findings and even suggest a higher figure. The British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB) asked 1,720 Iraqi adults last summer if they had lost family members by violence since 2003; 16% had lost one, and 5% two. Using the 2005 census total of 4,050,597 households in Iraq, this suggests 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion. Accounting for a standard margin of error, ORB says, "We believe the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063."

What is the real death toll in Iraq?