Rough week for Browns ends with frustrating loss (AP)

GLENDALE, Ariz. ? A difficult week came to a frustrating end for the Cleveland Browns, and a bad season got worse.

The Browns blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and were beaten in overtime by the Arizona Cardinals 20-17 on Sunday.

Cleveland (4-10) has lost four straight and seven out of eight.

The theme was the same ? playing close but coming up short.

"It always happens," Cleveland cornerback Joe Haden said. "We just have to figure out a way to get it fixed."

Colt McCoy didn't even make the trip to Arizona after sustaining a concussion on a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit from the Steelers' James Harrison. McCoy, as has been well documented, returned to the game a short time later after no concussion test was administered.

Later, he began showing symptoms and didn't practice last week.

Seneca Wallace stepped in for his first start of the season and promptly drove the team downfield for a touchdown after the opening kickoff.

He had Cleveland up 10-0 until the final 19 seconds of the first half.

When he connected with Greg Little for a 76-yard touchdown ? the Browns' longest play in four seasons ? Cleveland led 17-7 with 3:01 left in the third quarter.

Wallace was 18 of 31 for 226 yards.

"We had them on their heels and when it gets to that point, it is about not making mistakes," Wallace said, "not turning the ball over and giving them some easy points, and making plays. They played well on defense and made some plays. I need to help us out a lot more and make some more plays for our team."

Coach Pat Shurmur was asked if he would stay with Wallace, regardless of McCoy's status.

"It's too early to tell," Shurmur said. "That decision is made when you've got both guys healthy."

Arizona (7-7) became the ninth team in NFL history to win three overtime games in a season and just the second to win all three at home.

"We have a flair for dramatics," Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald said. "Today was kind of typical Cardinals fashion."

Little caught five passes for a career-best 131 yards for Cleveland.

A healthy Peyton Hillis gained a season-high 99 yards on 26 carries for Cleveland.

Arizona's offense, so slow to start even through the team's recent success, scored the final 13 points of the game.

John Skelton completed 5 of 7 for 82 yards in the 11-play, 87-yard drive that culminated in Beanie Wells' 1-yard touchdown run that cut the lead to 17-14 with 8:33 remaining in regulation.

A holding penalty on Cleveland's subsequent kickoff return pinned the Browns at their 10 and O'Brien Schofield got Arizona's first sack of the day on the elusive Wallace to push Cleveland back to its 5.

Schofield got through on the next play as well, grabbing Wallace by an ankle and spinning him to the ground as the quarterback lost the ball.

Initially, Wallace was ruled down on the play, but coach Ken Whisenhunt challenged and the call was reversed.

Replays showed the ball coming loose well before Wallace fell backward onto the turf. The Cardinals took over at the Cleveland 5 needing only to punch it in to take the lead.

But Jabaal Sheard got his second sack, and Cleveland's fourth of the game and Arizona settled for Jay Feely's 33-yard field goal that tied it at 17 with 5:40 to play.

Cleveland won the coin toss to get the ball first in overtime, but the Browns managed only one first down before having to punt. Brad Maynard had artfully kicked the ball away from Patrick Peterson, the spectacular rookie whose four punt returns for scores have tied an NFL record.

"I thought we did a very nice job, even on that last punt," Shurmur said. "We had a guy down in his face and you know we were trying to kick the ball out of bounds or try to pin him down there and the guy in his face thought he saw the fair catch."

He doesn't know Peterson very well, then. The rookie disdains the fair catch, especially with the game on the line.

He fielded it near his left sideline and ran across the field before making a run for it near the right sideline. He took it to the Cleveland 40 and, two plays later, Skelton found Fitzgerald, more open than he'd been all day, far downfield.

Notes: Little's TD catch was his 55th reception of the season, surpassing Eric Metcalf for second-most by a Browns rookie. Kevin Johnson has the team's rookie record with 66 in 1999. ... Cleveland lost three players ? LB Titus Brown (knee), WR Jordan Norwood (concussion) and LB Ben Jacobs (concussion).

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111219/ap_on_sp_fo_ga_su/fbn_browns

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Turkish mosque collapse kills 1, injures 9

ANKARA, Turkey?? An official says one worker was killed and nine others were rescued after the dome of a mosque collapsed.

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Mayor Hasan Unver told NTV television that the dome of the mosque being built in an industrial area of central Turkish town of Acigol tumbled down during construction, trapping 10 workers under a pile of iron.

He says nine of the workers were rescued with injuries while the other was pulled out dead.

State-run TRT television showed images of rescuers, some carrying a bright orange stretcher, scrambling to rescue one trapped worker amid a pile of rubble and iron rods.

The cause of the accident was under investigation.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45706530/ns/world_news-europe/

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NASA's RXTE detects 'heartbeat' of smallest black hole candidate

Friday, December 16, 2011

An international team of astronomers has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The evidence comes from a specific type of X-ray pattern, nicknamed a "heartbeat" because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram. The pattern until now has been recorded in only one other black hole system.

Named IGR J17091-3624 after the astronomical coordinates of its sky position, the binary system combines a normal star with a black hole that may weigh less than three times the sun's mass. That is near the theoretical mass boundary where black holes become possible.

Gas from the normal star streams toward the black hole and forms a disk around it. Friction within the disk heats the gas to millions of degrees, which is hot enough to emit X-rays. Cyclical variations in the intensity of the X-rays observed reflect processes taking place within the gas disk. Scientists think that the most rapid changes occur near the black hole's event horizon, the point beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape.

Astronomers first became aware of the binary system during an outburst in 2003. Archival data from various space missions show it becomes active every few years. Its most recent outburst started in February and is ongoing. The system is located in the direction of the constellation Scorpius, but its distance is not well established. It could be as close as 16,000 light-years or more than 65,000 light-years away.

The record-holder for wide-ranging X-ray variability is another black hole binary system named GRS 1915+105. This system is unique in displaying more than a dozen highly structured patterns, typically lasting between seconds and hours.

"We think that most of these patterns represent cycles of accumulation and ejection in an unstable disk, and we now see seven of them in IGR J17091," said Tomaso Belloni at Brera Observatory in Merate, Italy. "Identifying these signatures in a second black hole system is very exciting."

In GRS 1915, strong magnetic fields near the black hole's event horizon eject some of the gas into dual, oppositely directed jets that blast outward at about 98 percent the speed of light. The peak of its heartbeat emission corresponds to the emergence of the jet.

Changes in the X-ray spectrum observed by RXTE during each beat reveal that the innermost region of the disk emits enough radiation to push back the gas, creating a strong outward wind that stops the inward flow, briefly starving the black hole and shutting down the jet. This corresponds to the faintest emission. Eventually, the inner disk gets so bright and hot it essentially disintegrates and plunges toward the black hole, re-establishing the jet and beginning the cycle anew. This entire process happens in as little as 40 seconds.

While there is no direct evidence IGR J17091 possesses a particle jet, its heartbeat signature suggests that similar processes are at work. Researchers say that this system's heartbeat emission can be 20 times fainter than GRS 1915 and can cycle some eight times faster, in as little as five seconds.

Astronomers estimate that GRS 1915 is about 14 times the sun's mass, placing it among the most-massive-known black holes that have formed because of the collapse of a single star. The research team analyzed six months of RXTE observations to compare the two systems, concluding that IGR J17091 must possess a minuscule black hole.

"Just as the heart rate of a mouse is faster than an elephant's, the heartbeat signals from these black holes scale according to their masses," said Diego Altamirano, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Nov. 4 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers say this analysis is just the start of a larger program to compare both of these black holes in detail using data from RXTE, NASA's Swift satellite and the European XMM-Newton observatory.

"Until this study, GRS 1915 was essentially a one-off, and there's only so much we can understand from a single example," said Tod Strohmayer, the project scientist for RXTE at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Now, with a second system exhibiting similar types of variability, we really can begin to test how well we understand what happens at the brink of a black hole."

Launched in late 1995, RXTE is second only to Hubble as the longest serving of NASA's operating astrophysics missions. RXTE provides a unique observing window into the extreme environments of neutron stars and black holes.

###

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center: http://www.nasa.gov/goddard

Thanks to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116101/NASA_s_RXTE_detects__heartbeat__of_smallest_black_hole_candidate

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Palm-sized baby, 2nd smallest in US, is growing

This undated photo provided by Melinda Guido?s family shows Melinda, with her mother's fingers in the scene, in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing 9.5 ounces. She?s believed to be the second smallest surviving baby in the United States and third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Haydee Ibarra)

This undated photo provided by Melinda Guido?s family shows Melinda, with her mother's fingers in the scene, in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing 9.5 ounces. She?s believed to be the second smallest surviving baby in the United States and third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Haydee Ibarra)

This undated photo provided by Melinda Guido?s family shows Melinda in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks weighing 9.5 ounces. She?s believed to be the second smallest surviving baby in the United States and third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Haydee Ibarra)

Haydee Ibarra, looks at her 14-week-old daughter, Melinda Star Guido, at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Most babies her size don?t survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home as soon as the end of the month. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

14-week-old Melinda Star Guido holds her mother's little finger while lying in an incubator at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

14-week-old Melinda Star Guido holds her mother's little finger while lying in an incubator at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, a tad less than the weight of two iPhone 4S. Most babies her size don?t survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home as soon as the end of the month. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the United States and the third smallest in the world. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? At birth, Melinda Star Guido was so tiny she could fit into the palm of her doctor's hand. Weighing just 9 1/2 ounces ? less than a can of soda ? she is among the smallest babies ever born in the world. Most infants her size don't survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home by New Year's.

Melinda was born premature at 24 weeks over the summer and spent the early months cocooned in an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit in Southern California. Almost every day, her 22-year-old mother sits at her bedside and stays overnight whenever she can.

The day before her Thursday due date, Haydee Ibarra visited Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center where her daughter has been since her birth in late August. Melinda is believed to be the second smallest baby to survive in the U.S. and third in the world.

Ibarra caressed Melinda through the portholes of the incubator where nurses pinned up a homemade sign bearing her name. Now weighing four pounds, Melinda gripped Ibarra's pinky finger and yawned.

"Melinda, Melinda," she cooed at her daughter dressed in a polka dot onesie. "You're awake today."

During her pregnancy, Ibarra suffered from high blood pressure, which can be dangerous for both mother and fetus. She was transferred from a hospital near her San Fernando Valley home to the county's flagship hospital, which was better equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies.

There was a problem with the placenta, the organ that nourishes the developing fetus. The fetus, however, was not getting proper nutrition, blood and oxygen. Doctors knew Melinda would weigh less than a pound, but they were surprised at how small and fragile she was.

"The first few weeks, it was touch and go. None of us thought the baby was going to make it," said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, who oversees premature infants.

Even if she survived, doctors told Ibarra and her husband Yovani Guido, children born this extremely premature can have developmental delays and impairments such as blindness, deafness or cerebral palsy.

Ibarra, who previously had a stillborn, told doctors to do whatever necessary to help her baby.

"They said, 'We'll take the chance. Please try.' So we said. 'OK we'll try,'" Ramanathan recalled.

Melinda was delivered by cesarean section at 24 weeks and was immediately transferred to the NICU where a team of doctors and nurses kept watch around the clock. Infants born before 37 weeks are considered premature.

Melinda was kept insulated in an incubator and was hooked up to a machine to aid her breathing. She got nutrition through a feeding tube. Her mother said her skin felt like plastic because it was so thin.

"It takes a lot of good care and a lot of good luck. Most of them don't survive," said pediatrician Dr. Edward Bell of the University of Iowa who keeps an online database of the world's smallest surviving babies who were less than a pound at birth.

The list currently contains 126 babies dating back to 1936. Since submission is voluntary, it does not represent all survivors.

Ten babies weighing less than a pound were born last year and survived. Melinda joins three other tiny survivors delivered this year in Berkeley; Seoul, South Korea; and Iowa City, Iowa. All are bigger than Melinda, who is not eligible to be listed until she gets discharged.

Most tiny babies who survive tend to be female. That's because female fetuses mature faster than males of the same gestational age. Having more developed lungs and other vital organs increases odds of survival.

Bell published a study last year that found many survivors struggle with health and learning problems. For those for whom growth data are available, many are short and underweight for their age.

There are some success stories.

The smallest surviving baby born weighing 9.2 ounces is now a healthy 7-year-old and another who weighed 9.9 ounces at birth is an honors college student studying psychology. Their progress was detailed in a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics by doctors at Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois where the girls were born.

In the past three years, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center treated two other babies with extremely low birth weight who survived, but Melinda holds the record at the hospital.

A month after she was born, she was treated for an eye disorder that's common in premature babies. She faced her biggest test last month when she underwent surgery to close an artery that usually seals after birth.

Ybarra held Melinda for the first time after the surgery. Before that, she could only touch her through the incubator. The next challenge is learning to bottle feed before discharge. Ramanathan predicted at least another two-week stay, dashing her parents' hopes of taking her home by Christmas.

Ramanathan said it's too early to know how Melinda will fare when she grows up. Since she did not have major complications such as bleeding in the brain, he held out hope.

Melinda can breathe by herself, but still uses an oxygen tube as a precaution. On Wednesday, an ophthalmologist checked out her eyes and said everything looked good.

After the checkup, Ibarra lifted Melinda out of the incubator and sat in a rocking chair, cradling her.

___

Online:

Tiniest Babies Registry: http://www.healthcare.uiowa.edu/tiniestbabies/index.htm

___

Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-12-15-Tiny%20Baby/id-1e4a500f016f428d94bd0f68197e8164

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Thousands of birds make crash landing in Utah

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources employee frees some surviving grebes on Dec. 13, 2011 at Stratton Pond in Hurricane, Utah after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources employee frees some surviving grebes on Dec. 13, 2011 at Stratton Pond in Hurricane, Utah after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, surviving grebes swim across the waters of Stratton Pond in Hurricane, Utah following their release by Utah Division of Wildlife Resources employees Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, a surviving grebe huddles in the snow Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, a surviving grebe waddles across the snow Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

In this photo provided by Utah Division of Wildlife Services, a surviving grebe huddles in the snow Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 after thousands of the birds crash landed throughout Southern Utah on Monday night. Officials say storm clouds above city lights Monday night probably confused thousands of grebes, which are a duck-like aquatic bird that migrates south for the winter. Thousands of the birds were killed, but more than 2,000 had been rescued by Tuesday evening. The survivors were released into Washington County bodies. (AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Services, Lynn Chamberlain)

ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) ? Thousands of migratory birds were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she'd ever seen.

Crews went to work cleaning up the dead birds and rescuing the injured survivors after the creatures crash-landed in the St. George area Monday night.

By midday Wednesday, volunteers had helped rescue more than 3,000 birds, releasing them into a nearby pond. There's no count on how many died, although officials estimate it's upwards of 1,500.

"They're just everywhere," said Teresa Griffin, wildlife program manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resource's southern region. "It's been nonstop. All our employees are driving around picking them up, and we've got so many people coming to our office and dropping them off."

No human injuries or property damage have been reported.

Officials say stormy conditions probably confused the flock of eared grebes, a duck-like aquatic bird likely making its way to the Mexican coast for the winter.

The birds plunged into a Cedar City Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields, highways and over miles of property that had been blanketed by about 3 inches of gleaming snow.

"The storm clouds over the top of the city lights made it look like a nice, flat body of water. All the conditions were right," Griffin told The Spectrum newspaper in St. George (http://bit.ly/rYpQbJ). "So the birds landed to rest, but ended up slamming into the pavement."

Kevin McGowan, who studies birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., said grebes rely on starlight to navigate during their nighttime migration.

"Before there were (artificial lights), the sky was always paler than the ground," he told The Associated Press. "When all of a sudden there's light all over the place, they don't know which way is up anymore."

McGowan said it's not uncommon for birds to crash en masse, especially if they confuse the ground for water.

A high-profile crash in Arkansas in January killed about 4,500 birds, mainly red-winged blackbirds. The National Wildlife Heath Center concluded the birds were startled by loud noises in the area, including celebratory fireworks on New Year's Eve, and crashed amid their poor night-vision.

More than 175 mass death events, in which more than 1,000 birds died, have been reported to the National Wildlife Heath Center in the past 10 years. Causes for those die-offs included disease, weather, poisoning, trauma and starvation.

But Griffin said the Utah downing was notable among the ones she's seen because it was so widespread. Downed flocks were reported all over Cedar City, and as far as 30 miles south.

"I've been here 15 years, and this was the worst downing I've seen," she told the newspaper.

Wildlife officials said they were continuing the rescue effort that started Tuesday afternoon and included residents collecting grebes ? which weigh about a pound ? and delivering them in cardboard boxes to the wildlife department's office.

Officers said once they dropped the birds into bodies of water in southern Utah's Washington County, including a pond near Hurricane, the water-loving creatures were "very active."

Many of the birds had broken wings or other injuries from the accident. Wildlife agency spokesman Lynn Chamberlain said the birds' hollow bones can heal, although humans can't do much to help the process.

Keeping them in water ? where they have food and won't have to fly ? improves their chances.

"We're giving them the best shot they can," Chamberlain said. "The likelihood is that most of them will survive."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2011-12-14-Bird%20Crash%20Landing/id-2525568bb64a4452848701945488456a

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Video: Reality check in Iraq

South Pole feat remembered, 100 years later

Polar adventurers, scientists and the prime minister of Norway gathered at the bottom of the world Wednesday to mark the 100th anniversary of explorer Roald Amundsen becoming the first to reach the South Pole.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45660589#45660589

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FAA chief on leave after drunken driving arrest

This handout provided by Fairfax County, Va. Sheriff's Office shows FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. Babbitt was placed on a leave of absence Monday and U.S. officials said his employment is under review following his arrest for drunken driving in suburban Northern Virginia. (AP Photo/Fairfax County, Va. Sheriff's Office)

This handout provided by Fairfax County, Va. Sheriff's Office shows FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. Babbitt was placed on a leave of absence Monday and U.S. officials said his employment is under review following his arrest for drunken driving in suburban Northern Virginia. (AP Photo/Fairfax County, Va. Sheriff's Office)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Transportation Department officials are deciding how to handle Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt's weekend arrest on charges of drunken driving in suburban northern Virginia.

Babbitt was placed on a leave of absence Monday, and Transportation officials are in "discussions with legal counsel" about his employment status, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's office said in a statement Monday afternoon.

The Federal Aviation Administration is part of the Transportation Department. Babbitt is about halfway through a five-year term.

Babbitt, 65, was charged with driving while intoxicated after a patrol officer spotted him driving on the wrong side of the road and pulled him over around 10:30 p.m. Saturday in Fairfax City, Va., police in the Washington suburb said.

Babbitt, who lives in nearby Reston, Va., was the only occupant in the vehicle, police said. He cooperated and was released on his own recognizance.

Babbitt apparently delayed telling administration officials about the arrest. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama and Transportation Department officials learned of the arrest Monday afternoon, about an hour before a 1:30 p.m. statement was released saying Babbitt had been placed on leave at his request.

Separately, Fairfax City police issued a statement on the arrest to the media at about noon Monday, which their policies require in cases where a public official has been arrested. Police refused to disclose the results of Babbitt's blood alcohol test. The legal limit is .08.

LaHood has aggressively campaigned against drunken driving, and is working with police agencies and safety advocates on an annual holiday crackdown on drinking and driving later this month. Safety advocates credit LaHood with doing more to raise the visibility of human factors in highway safety ? including drunken driving, drivers distracted by cell phone use, and parents who fail to buckle in their children ? than any previous transportation secretary.

Deputy FAA Administrator Michael Huerta will serve as acting administrator, the Transportation Department statement said. In recent months Huerta has been leading the FAA's troubled NextGen effort to transition from an air traffic control system based on World War II-era radar technology to one based on satellite technology.

Babbitt was a former airline captain and internationally recognized expert in aviation and labor relations when Obama tapped him in 2009 to head the FAA. He was a pilot for the now-defunct Eastern Airlines for 25 years, and had served as president of the Air Line Pilots Association. As head of ALPA, he championed the "one level of safety" initiative implemented in 1995 to improve safety standards across the airline industry.

Babbitt's nomination in 2009 was warmly received by both industry officials and airline unions. His easy manner and insider's knowledge of the airline industry generated respect in Congress, where he regularly testified on safety issues and in support of NextGen.

Babbitt took over at the FAA when the agency was still reeling from the exposure of widespread safety gaps in the regional airline industry. The problems were revealed by a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the February 2009 crash of a regional airliner near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50 people.

Babbitt and LaHood promised to immediately implement a series of safety initiatives. At Babbitt's urging airlines adopted a series of voluntary safety measures, although safety advocates say voluntary measures aren't enough. The FAA under Babbitt has also initiated several efforts to craft major new safety regulations, ranging from preventing pilot fatigue to boosting experience levels and training of airline pilots.

But Babbitt has struggled to realize several of those safety proposals. Some proposals have stalled as industry opponents lobbied White House officials against the proposed regulations, saying they would cost too much or be too burdensome.

The biggest crisis of Babbitt's FAA tenure occurred last spring over a period of several weeks when nine air traffic controllers were allegedly caught sleeping on the job or were unresponsive to radio calls while on duty. The head of the FAA's Air Traffic Organization was forced to resign during the ensuing uproar.

As the FAA's top official, Babbitt has the final say in disciplinary proceedings involving controllers who violate the agency's drug and alcohol regulations.

___

Barakat reported from Fairfax, Va.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-06-FAA%20Chief-Drunken%20Driving/id-2fbf80a99da94808abd5865f583f93ca

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