FBI investigating fake tweet about White House explosions, Obama injury

The FBI is investigating a fake tweet from an Associated Press account that claimed that two explosions had occurred at the White House and injured President Obama. The AP suspended its account on Tuesday afternoon after hackers gained access. 

The bogus tweet briefly set off a firestorm of confusion on the microblogging service.  

"Earlier this afternoon the @AP Twitter account was hacked. Out of a sense of caution, we have suspended other AP Twitter feeds," said Paul Colford, director of AP media relations, in a statement. "We are working with Twitter to sort this out.”

A spokesman for the Secret Service said Tuesday that the agency was aware of the Twitter hack, and would be monitoring the situation and take any appropriate steps to follow up.

In its own report, the AP said the hacker attack on its Twitter account and mobile Twitter account were preceded by phishing attempts on the wire service's corporate network. 

For phishing attacks, hackers send people malware-laced messages that appear to be from people they know in an attempt to compromise their computer and get access to their passwords and other information. 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that the president is "fine" during the daily press briefing with the White House press corps.  

At the top of the briefing, AP reporter Julie Pace — who traditionally asks the first question of press secretary Jay Carney — noted that the wire service's Twitter feed had been hacked and was posting "obviously false" reports.

White House press secretary Jay Carney thanked her for the clarification.

"I appreciate that," Carney told Pace. "And I can say that the president is fine, I was just with him."

The false tweet also sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging after it was posted, but it quickly recovered after Carney confirmed that the report was erroneous.

The Syrian Electronic Army, or SEA, claimed responsibility for the hacker attack on the AP. 

"This small tweet created some chaos in the United States in addition to a decline in some U.S. stocks," SEA said on its website. 

The group says its cause is to support the Syrian government and President Bashar Assad, as well as "spread the truth about all those who wish ill of our country." 

It has claimed responsibility for recent hacker attacks on the "60 Minutes" Twitter account and NPR's website and social media accounts.

--This report was originally published at 2:06 p.m. and last updated at 6:08 p.m.

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Justice Kennedy Suggests Children Of Same-Sex Couples Suffer ‘Immediate Legal Injury’ From Ban

Early in this morning’s Supreme Court oral argument over the constitutionality of the California ban on same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested the children of same-sex couples suffer “immediate legal injury” from Proposition 8, according to Bloomberg. “They want their parents to have full recognition and status,” Kennedy said, adding that the “voice of those children” is important.

Kennedy, who is likely the swing vote, also suggested he was very uncomfortable striking down Proposition 8, according to a tweet from SCOTUSblog. Kennedy raised dismissing the case, which would leave in place the lower court ruling invalidating the same-sex marriage ban, but would not set any precedent about equal rights or marriage equality.

In response to Kennedy’s assertion, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether children would actually be harmed by Proposition 8, saying there is “considerable disagreement” about the “consequences” of same-sex marriage. “I take no position on whether it’s harmful or not, but it’s certainly true there is no answer to that scientific question,” he said, according to tweets from the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly.

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Kentucky Basketball Star’s Injury Spotlights Absurdity Of The NBA’s Age Limit

With just more than eight minutes remaining on the clock, the University of Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel chased down Florida guard Mike Rosario and swatted away a fast-break layup attempt. It was Noel’s 106th block of his freshman season at Kentucky. It was also his last. As he returned to the floor, Noel bumped into the basket support, twisted his knee, and collapsed to the floor. His left anterior cruciate ligament was torn, his season — and likely his Kentucky career — ended on a block he never should have made in a game he never should have played.

Noel is only at Kentucky, and only in college, because the National Basketball Association instituted a rule in 2005 requiring all American-born players to be one year removed from high school before they can enter the league’s draft. Nevermind that Noel, the top-ranked player in the high school class of 2012, would have surely been a first-round pick were he eligible last year. Noel wanted to play in the NBA and an NBA team would have gladly accepted his services. He is in college not because he wanted to be, not because of some sense of amateurism or for an education. He is in college because he had to be.

Proponents of the NBA age limit (as well as those who think it should be stronger) argue that it is a good policy because it allows players to mature and improve their games before they jump to the pros. This is nonsense. The age limit exists because NBA teams, some burned by straight-from-high-school prospects that didn’t work out in the past, saw an opportunity to protect themselves against the possibility that the people they pay to scout and draft players aren’t very good at their jobs. Rather than risk millions of dollars on players who entered the draft right out of high school, the NBA now forces those players to perform a one-year trial run in the cost-free minor league that is college basketball.

It is entirely possible that Noel could have suffered the same injury at the professional level, but if he did, he would have already signed a contract and would have a guaranteed paycheck from his NBA team. Instead, he received a scholarship worth comparably little, and though he will still get drafted, the injury could cost him an untold amount of money if his draft stock drops. Even then, he is probably lucky, since an injury that was more likely to threaten his career entirely would have cost him even more.

But while Noel’s injury highlights problems with the limit, what makes it a bad rule is that it is another unnecessary form of restriction on young athletes that doesn’t exist for other workers. Replace Noel with a person with a different skill-set and basketball with a different industry, and no such policy would stand. An 18-year-old computer whizkid with an offer to join Apple is free to take the job. Someone of the same age with a talent for writing who had a job offer from the New York Times has the same opportunity. But because the NBA wants to protect itself from itself, no such chance exists for talented basketball players like Noel, who, even if an NBA team would be willing to pay them to play, are forced to spend one year as indentured servants in a system where everyone — the NCAA, the NBA, and their schools — makes money except them.

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