Why This 7-Year-Old Is the Doogie Howser of Videogame Design

It’s not unusual for a seven-year-old girl to dream of being a ballerina, but it’s unheard of for a child so young to design a computer game about it. Nonetheless, first-grader and computer science prodigy Zora Ball did just that, making her quite possibly the youngest videogame programmer ever.

Using an open-source software program called Bootstrap, the primary school student designed a mobile game app she titled Vampire Diamonds. In it, the player takes on the role of the main protagonist, a ballerina, whose goal is to search for a jewel that’s hidden in a nail salon, while trying to avoid an evil vampire.

The game debuted at FATE’s Bootstrap Expo last year and while widely acclaimed, some were suspicious that the first-grader may have secretly received help—most likely from her older brother, Trace Ball, a STEM Scholar of the Year. To prove them wrong, the seven-year-old reportedly reconfigured her app on the spot.

Bootstrap, and its functional programming language Racket, are usually taught to kids between the ages of 12-16 as a way to use videogame development to teach algebraic concepts to students. Zora learned it in an after-school program run by the educational nonprofit known as FATE, or The Foundation for the Advancement of Technology in Education.

Kelly Ohlert, FATE’s executive director, tells TakePart, “While Zora was able to follow the directions in order to write the code for her game, everything we know about cognitive psychology indicates that a seven year-old probably can’t yet comprehend the curriculum-based algebra that is the heart of Bootstrap. That being said, she understood enough of the coding side to make simple changes to her game upon request, which is huge.”

FATE’s mission is to promote the skilled and intelligent use of education technology. Ohlert tells TakePart, “Specifically, we are targeting the problem of not having enough students trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to meet the needs of the next-generation workforce.

According to the Brookings Institute, the U.S. is already suffering from a lack of professionals qualified for STEM careers. Part of that lack comes from the fact that so few women are involved in science-based professions. That’s why tech companies are targeting girls and young women for more education and employment opportunities. In addition to FATE, which targets boys and girls alike, Microsoft sponsors DigiGirlzHighTech Camp, “Girls Who Code” offers free summer workshops to female high school students, and Womens’ Tech Connect mentors young computer scientists involved in the science education program through NetHope.

While Zora Ball is still too young to think of her new role as the poster child for girls in science, her recent accomplishment is another kick in the slowly opening door for girls to embrace STEM-based fields.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Girls Love Science Too: 5 Tech Toys to Inspire Your Daughter

• ‘Girls Who Code’ Combats the Gender Gap in Computer Sciences

• More Time in the Womb = Higher Math Scores

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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Baby Girl on the Way for Big Brother's Britney Haynes

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/20/2013 at 08:45 PM ET

Britney Haynes is expecting a little houseguest of her own!

“Halfway there and it’s definitely a GIRL!! She arrives in July; couldn’t be happier,” the Big Brother star Tweeted Wednesday.

Along with her tweet, Haynes, 25, posted a photo of herself holding sonogram photos of her baby girl.

The outspoken player competed as a houseguest on season 12 of the CBS reality show where she placed fourth before returning as a “coach” and eventually a player during season 14, where she placed eighth.

During season 14, Haynes often discussed missing her husband — high school sweetheart Nathan ‘Ryan’ Godwin, whom she married in between seasons in March 2012 — and expressed her desire to become a mother to fellow coach and new mom Janelle Pierzina, who’s currently expecting her second child in August.

Courtesy Britney Haynes

– Patrick Gomez

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Scientists use 3-D printing to help grow an ear

WASHINGTON (AP) — Printing out body parts? Cornell University researchers showed it's possible by creating a replacement ear using a 3-D printer and injections of living cells.

The work reported Wednesday is a first step toward one day growing customized new ears for children born with malformed ones, or people who lose one to accident or disease.

It's part of the hot field of tissue regeneration, trying to regrow all kinds of body parts. Scientists hope using 3-D printing technology might offer a speedier method with more lifelike results.

If it pans out, "this enables us to rapidly customize implants for whoever needs them," said Cornell biomedical engineer Lawrence Bonassar, who co-authored the research published online in the journal PLoS One.

This first-step work crafted a human-shaped ear that grew with cartilage from a cow, easier to obtain than human cartilage, especially the uniquely flexible kind that makes up ears. Study co-author Dr. Jason Spector of Weill Cornell Medical Center is working on the next step — how to cultivate enough of a child's remaining ear cartilage in the lab to grow an entirely new ear that could be implanted in the right spot.

Wednesday's report is "a nice advancement," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the new research.

Three-dimensional printers, which gradually layer materials to form shapes, are widely used in manufacturing. For medicine, Atala said the ear work is part of broader research that shows "the technology now is at the point where we can in fact print these 3-dimensional structures and they do become functional over time."

Today, people who need a new ear often turn to prosthetics that require a rod to fasten to the head. For children, doctors sometimes fashion a new ear from the stiffer cartilage surrounding ribs, but it's a big operation. Spector said the end result seldom looks completely natural. Hence the quest to use a patient's own cells to grow a replacement ear.

The Cornell team started with a 3-D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head for a picture of the existing ear to match. It beams the ear's geometry into a computer, without the mess of a traditional mold or the radiation if CT scans were used to measure ear anatomy.

"Kids aren't afraid of it," said Bonassar, who used his then-5-year-old twin daughters' healthy ears as models.

From that image, the 3-D printer produced a soft mold of the ear. Bonassar injected it with a special collagen gel that's full of cow cells that produce cartilage — forming a scaffolding. Over the next few weeks, cartilage grew to replace the collagen. At three months, it appeared to be a flexible and workable outer ear, the study concluded.

Now Bonassar's team can do the process even faster by using the living cells in that collagen gel as the printer's "ink." The 3-D technology directly layers the gel into just the right ear shape for cartilage to cover, without having to make a mold first.

The next step is to use a patient's own cells in the 3-D printing process. Spector, a reconstructive surgeon, is focusing on children born without a fully developed external ear, a condition called microtia. They have some ear cartilage-producing cells in that tissue, just not enough. So he's experimenting with ways to boost those cells in the lab, "so we can grow enough of them from that patient to make an ear," he explained.

That hurdle aside, cartilage may be the tissue most amenable to growing with the help of 3-D printing technology, he said. That's because cartilage doesn't need blood vessels growing inside it to survive.

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M&A deals lift Wall Street shares nearer a record high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as this year's ongoing surge in merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes closed in on all-time highs.

Office Depot Inc surged 9.4 percent to $5.02 after a person familiar with the matter said the No. 2 U.S. office supply retailer was in advanced talks to merge with smaller rival OfficeMax Inc , which jumped more than 20 percent.

News of the potential move came just days after Berkshire Hathaway and a partner agreed to acquire H.J. Heinz Co for $23 billion, and following a revised $20 billion takeover of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo by Anheuser-Busch InBev .

Deal activity has helped equities resist a pullback as investors use dips in stocks as buying opportunities. The S&P is up about 7 percent so far in 2013 and has climbed for the past seven weeks in its longest weekly winning streak since January 2011, though most of the weekly gains have been slim.

The Dow industrials closed 0.9 percent away from their record high while S&P 500 was 2.2 percent off its peak.

"Deals are good for the market," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The fact that they're being done is a positive."

More than $158 billion in deals has been announced so far in 2013, more than double the activity in the same period last year and accounting for 57 percent of global deal volumes, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 53.91 points, or 0.39 percent, to 14,035.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 11.15 points, or 0.73 percent, to 1,530.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 21.56 points, or 0.68 percent, to 3,213.59.

Other stocks in the office supplies sector also rose. Larger rival Staples Inc shot up 13.1 percent to $14.65 as the best performer on the S&P 500.

"Equity investors have to be encouraged by M&A since, if the number crunchers are offering large premiums, that shows how much value is still in the market," said Mike Gibbs, co-head of the equity advisory group at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.

On the downside, health insurance stocks tumbled, led by a 6.4 percent drop in Humana Inc to $73.01. The company said the government's proposed 2014 payment rates for Medicare Advantage participants were lower than expected and would hurt its profit outlook.

UnitedHealth Group lost 1.2 percent to $56.66. The Morgan Stanley healthcare payor index <.hmo> dropped 1.2 percent.

Wall Street's strong start to the year was fueled by better-than-expected corporate earnings, as well as a compromise in Washington that temporarily averted automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that are predicted to damage the economy.

The compromise on across-the-board spending cuts postponed the matter until March 1, at which point the cuts take effect. Ahead of the debate over the cuts, known as sequestration, further gains for stocks may be difficult to come by.

Some investors say the debate could be the catalyst for a long anticipated sell-off after the market's recent strong run.

Carter Worth, a technical analyst at Oppenheimer, pointed to the "especially complacent action of the past six weeks," noting that, as of Friday, stocks have gone 33 sessions without a dip of more than 1.5 percent.

"We would be selling aggressively into the market's current strength," he said in a research note.

Economic data showed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index unexpectedly edged down to 46 in February from 47 in the prior month as builders faced higher material costs.

According to the Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Express Scripts rose 2.5 percent to $56.98 after the pharmacy benefits manager posted fourth-quarter earnings.

About two stocks rose for everyone that fell on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 6.48 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, in line with the daily average so far this year.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Ryan Vlastelica and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend

Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Oscar Pistorius wept at a hearing on Tuesday seeking bail.

PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots.

“I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated,” Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read Tuesday to a packed courtroom by his defense lawyer, Barry Roux. “I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.”

Prosecutors painted a far different picture, one of a calculated killer, a world-renowned athlete who had the presence of mind and calm to strap on his prosthetic legs, walk 20 feet to the bathroom door and open fire as his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered inside, behind a locked door.

“The applicant shot and killed an unarmed, innocent women,” Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, said in court on Tuesday. That, Mr. Nel argued, amounted to premeditated murder, a charge that could send Mr. Pistorius to prison for life.

In court, Mr. Pistorius, a Paralympic track star who competed against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympics despite having lost both his lower legs as an infant, wept uncontrollably as Mr. Roux gave the runner’s account of the fateful early morning. At one point, Magistrate Desmond Nair called a recess to allow Mr. Pistorius, who was sobbing loudly, his face contorted, to regain his composure.

“My compassion as a human being does not allow me to just sit here,” Magistrate Nair said.

As the defense and prosecution laid out their competing versions of the shooting, some details were beyond dispute.

Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were alone in the house, having spent the evening there. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp through the bathroom door, fatally wounding her. He broke down the door and carried her down the stairs, where she died in the foyer of his upscale home in a highly secured compound.

The young woman, a model, was cremated Tuesday on the other side of the country in her hometown, Port Elizabeth. Her family and friends mourned her and called for the authorities to deal harshly with Mr. Pistorius.

“There’s a space missing inside all the people that she knew that can’t be filled again,” her brother, Adam Steenkamp, told reporters after the memorial service.

In court, Mr. Pistorius is seeking bail on the charge of premeditated murder, but he faces an uphill battle. Magistrate Nair ruled Tuesday that the case would be treated as the most serious kind of offense, which means bail will be granted only if the defense can prove extraordinary circumstances requiring it.

The court proceedings, though they concerned only whether Mr. Pistorius would receive bail, offered the first real glimpse into what unfolded at his home on the day of the shooting.

In his affidavit, Mr. Pistorius said that he and Ms. Steenkamp had decided to stay in for the night. He canceled plans with his friends for a night on the town in Johannesburg, while she opted against movies with one of her friends. They had a quiet evening, he said. She did yoga. He watched television. About 10 p.m., they went to sleep.

In the early morning hours, he said, he woke up to move a fan from the balcony and to close the sliding doors in the bedroom.

“I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized that someone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I felt a sense of terror rushing over me.”

He had already said in the affidavit that he feared South Africa’s rampant violent crime, and later added that he was worried because there were no bars on the window to the bathroom. Construction workers had left ladders in his garden, he said.

“I believed someone had entered my house,” he said in the affidavit. “I grabbed my 9-millimeter pistol from underneath my bed. On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom, and I thought Reeva was in bed.”

Walking on his stumps, he heard the sound of movement inside the toilet, a small room within the bathroom.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

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What's Next for Mindy McCready's Two Young Boys?

By Steve Helling

02/19/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready's apparent suicide on Sunday has left her two young sons in custodial limbo.

The boys – Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months – had been in state custody since Feb. 7, when McCready called police to ask for help in making her father and stepmother leave her home. When police arrived, McCready appeared to be intoxicated, according to a Department of Human Services report.

In a subsequent petition, the singer's father, Tim McCready, asked the court to order her to undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluation and treatment, alleging that his daughter, who had recently lost her boyfriend, "hasn't had a bath in a week ... screams about everything ... [is] very verbally abusive to Zander."

After a judge granted the petition, the children were quickly removed and placed into foster care. Although McCready was released from treatment, the boys remained in state custody.

At the time, Zander's father, Billy McKnight, requested custody of his son. "My son needs me," he told PEOPLE on Feb. 8. "I'm married, working and successful. I'm on the right track and proud of it. I've been sober for years. I just want my son."

But McCready's mother and stepfather, Gayle and Michael Inge, also want custody of the children – and authorities seem to agree.

In a proposed order sent to Circuit Judge Lee Harrod, the Department of Human Services proposed that the Inges might be a better fit for the children, claiming that they have "a substantial relationship." The Inges had custody of Zander for much the past few years, during McCready’s rehab and jail stints.

With McCready's death, the judge will have to determine what is in the children's best interest. A custody hearing has been scheduled for April 5.

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Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

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Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

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Yen firmer but near lows, Asian shares capped

TOKYO (Reuters) - The yen remained near recent lows on Tuesday, as attention turned to the appointment of a new Bank of Japan governor.

Regional share markets held to tight ranges as the absence of catalysts and a holiday in the U.S. overnight capped demand.

The yen, which has dropped 20 percent against the dollar since mid-November, fell further at the start of the week after financial leaders from the G20 promised not to devalue their currencies to boost exports and avoided singling out Japan for any direct criticism.

The choice of the next BOJ governor and two deputies has drawn market attention as a gauge to how strongly Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is committed to reflating the economy. The G20's message was that as long as Japan pursues aggressive monetary easing to achieve that goal, a weaker yen as a result of such domestic monetary policy will be tolerated, analysts say.

"But that means that some other economy's monetary conditions have been tightened," said Barclays Capital in a note.

"Japan hasn't even changed its policy stance thus far, and the effect of expectations of a looser setting have led to limited moves in domestic interest rates, but the sell-off of the JPY has been marked and has clearly caused unease in other economies."

Market reaction was muted to the release of the minutes of the BOJ's January 21-22 meeting, when the bank set a 2 percent inflation target and pledged to an open-ended quantitative easing from 2014, but the yen was bought when Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters Japan has no plans to buy foreign currency bonds as part of monetary easing, a trader said.

The dollar was down 0.2 percent to 93.75 yen, but remained near its highest since May 2010 of 94.465 hit on February 11. The euro also eased 0.3 percent to 125.05 yen, below its peak since April 2010 of 127.71 yen touched on February 6.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> was nearly flat.

The Nikkei stock average <.n225> opened down 0.6 percent, after closing up 2.1 percent on Monday to approach its highest level since September 2008 of 11,498.42 tapped on February 6. <.t/>

Australian shares <.axjo> inched down 0.1 percent on the back of weakness in metals prices, with investors focusing on local corporate earnings for direction after a three-month rally that has taken the market to 4-1/2 year highs.

Seoul shares <.ks11> opened little changed, and were expected to struggle to find momentum on worries about the weak yen.

"The market has been taking a breather recently after staging a recovery earlier this month," said Lee Jae-man, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities in Seoul. "The weaker yen has been priced in to some extent, and the pace of its fall is expected to slow down."

Disappointing earnings pushed European shares lower on Monday for a third straight session of losses while U.S. markets were closed for the President's Day holiday.

The euro was steady around $1.3348. The currency eased slightly on Monday after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said in a speech at the European Parliament that "the exchange rate is not a policy target but is important for growth and price stability" and that its rise is "a risk."

The risk of an inconclusive outcome in Italy's election this weekend added to investor concerns.

Sterling hovered near a seven-month low against the dollar touched on Monday after a key policymaker made comments about the need for further weakness, while recent poor data has spurred worries of another British recession.

U.S. crude fell 0.4 percent to $95.47 a barrel.

(Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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China’s Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.

This 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating digital attacks.

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Other security firms that have tracked “Comment Crew” say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued as a consensus document for all 16 of the United States intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398, according to officials with knowledge of its classified content.

Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, saying it hoped to “bring visibility to the issues addressed in the report.” Times reporters then tested the conclusions with other experts, both inside and outside government, who have examined links between the hacking groups and the army (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Company to investigate a sophisticated Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another Chinese group. The firm is not currently working for the Times Company but it is in discussions about a business relationship.)

While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They describe China itself as a victim of computer hacking, and point out, accurately, that there are many hacking groups inside the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006. American intelligence agencies and private security firms that track many of the 20 or so other Chinese groups every day say those groups appear to be contractors with links to the unit.

While the unit’s existence and operations are considered a Chinese state secret, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that the Mandiant report was “completely consistent with the type of activity the Intelligence Committee has been seeing for some time.”

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Mindy McCready: Under Police Scrutiny at Time of Suicide?

By Steve Helling and Mike Fleeman

02/18/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready and David Wilson

Courtesy Mindy McCready

When Mindy McCready talked to police in recent weeks, her account of how her boyfriend came to be found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head concerned police, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE.

"At first, she said she hadn't heard the gunshot because the TV was too loud. Then she said she had heard the gunshot," the source says. "So obviously there were a lot of questions, and the Sheriff was asking for clarification."

But before investigators could re-interview her, the long-troubled country singer also would die under eerily similar circumstances, her body discovered at the same Heber Springs, Ark., house just feet away from where David Wilson died.

McCready's death was blamed on what "appears to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound," the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

This differed from how the sheriff characterized Wilson's case. His cause and manner of death still have not been established by the coroner. It was McCready's publicist, and not a law enforcement official, who announced that Wilson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

After Wilson's death, McCready, 37, spoke to investigators three times, but they didn't feel as if they were through with her.

"At no point did [police] tell her she was a suspect, and she wasn't officially one," says the source. "But she knew that some of her answers didn't stand up to questioning. She was very cooperative, but she just wasn't making a lot of sense."

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