How’s the president going to get in? The White House was placed on lockdown Tuesday night after “smoking objects” were found near the North Portico, according to a Secret Service agent at the scene. President Obama was having dinner a few blocks away at BLT Steak, celebrating the first lady’s 48th birthday with friends. The object in question, believed by the Secret Service to be a smoke bomb, appeared on the property as Occupy Congress protesters staged a large rally in front of the White House.

Apparently unsatisfied with the time he'd been given to defend his corporate record in last night's debate, Mitt Romney held a press conference Tuesday to continue explaining how Bain Capital created 120,000 jobs when he was CEO. The Republican frontrunner did acknowledge that other companies Bain had invested in lost about 10,000 jobs, but when those are compared with the jobs that were created, his record shows positive job growth. Romney has been criticized by competitors lately for his work at the private-equity firm and for not releasing his tax records. At the press conference, he said he would release his 2011 tax return when it's available in April, but said his tax rate in recent years has been something like the 15 percent assessed on investment income, as he is a multimillionaire. 

It’s never a good sign when someone says to “prepare for the worst.” The World Bank cut its global growth outlook to 2.5 percent Tuesday. In June, the Washington bank estimated 3.6 percent growth, but is now pulling back on its forecast because of the euro crisis, which will slow developing markets like India and Mexico. The bank specifically tells these emerging markets to “prepare for the worst” like in 2008. The cut in growth outlook is the biggest in three years.

With Wikipedia and several other websites set to go dark at midnight for 24 hours in protest of two Internet piracy bills—the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act—the online industry is on a collision course with Washington politics. A total of 115 companies and organizations, like media and tech giants like News Corporation and the Recording Industry Association of America, are currently spending millions of dollars to make sure the anti-piracy bills are passed. Meanwhile, others like Google and Facebook are more concerned about how their businesses will be affected. The tech industry argues that the laws will hurt the average Internet user by censoring the Internet—like the college student who uses Wikipedia as a research tool. The law would require that a website like Google—which will use its homepage to detail opposition against the bill—will be liable for hosting links to foreign sites that offers illegal copies of a film, for example.

The dust is still settling at Yahoo after the company’s cofounder and board member Jerry Yang unexpectedly resigned Tuesday, leaving without a real explanation. Yang departed to “pursue other interests outside of Yahoo,” according to the letter he sent to the company’s chairman. Yang’s colleagues praised him for his visionary leadership, but the company suffered during his tenure as chief executive. He fought off Microsoft’s 2008 bid to buy Yahoo, but the search engine’s stock subsequently tumbled. The news of Yang’s exit bumped share prices 4 percent.

Another five bodies were found Tuesday morning aboard the sunken Costa Concordia, bringing the official death toll up to 11. Divers found the bodies while the Italian Navy blasted holes in the hull of the partially submerged cruise ship in a desperate attempt to find any survivors before a storm reaches it. Meanwhile, Italian newspapers reported that according to a transcript of the radio on the ship and a telephone conversation with ship Capt. Francesco Schettino and the Coast Guard, Schettino pleaded not to return to the ship. The officer reportedly told Schettino, “It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses,” when Schettino said everything aboard was “all OK.” An Italian judge has placed Schettino on house arrest, allowing him to leave jail on Tuesday.

As a new burst of violence shakes Syria, leaving at least 30 dead across the nation, the government said it “absolutely rejects” a plan to send Arab troops into the nation. If “foreign” troops enter Syria, Assad’s regime promised to confront the trespassers. President Obama said Tuesday that the violence is “unacceptable” and the Syrian regime must step aside immediately. As if the situation weren’t bad enough, the U.S. said there are “strong” signs that Iran is giving Syria weapons. In the last 10 months, 5,000 people have reportedly been killed in Assad’s brutal crackdown, but a more staggering 400 people have allegedly been killed in the last three weeks alone.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a legislation proposed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation requiring porn stars wear condoms when filming within the city, where 80 percent of the U.S porn industry is based. The legislation will allow the LAPD to perform spot checks on sets once the mandate goes into effect in 90 days. The city attorney was originally skeptical about passing a law that was already preempted by the state, but he agreed to move forward with the measure after AHF vowed to cover up to $50,000 in legal costs if the city is sued over the new policy. The foundation is still pushing to get the initiative approved across Los Angeles County.

The following story is not for the squeamish. The Los Angeles Police Department found a human head inside a bag on a hiking trail below the Hollywood sign. A dog found the body part Tuesday afternoon in the hills by Canyon Drive. Police are considering the case a homicide and are looking for other severed body parts in the area.

They say money can't buy you love, but in some cases it can be a real lifesaver. The snowshoe hiker who was trapped for two nights on snowy Mount Rainier told reporters he survived by burning cash to stay warm. Yong Chun Kim, 66, was rescued on Monday after enduring freezing temperatures and eight feet of fresh snow. An experienced snowshoer, Kim wasn't equipped with overnight gear, but he made the best of his resources, burning leaves and socks in addition to $1 and $5 bills, and using the fire to cook rice. Though it took nine hours to dig Kim out from a snowbank, he was in such good condition that medics sent him straight home rather than to the hospital.

The Orange British Academy Film Awards—more commonly known as BAFTA—have announced this year's nominees. Golden Globe winners The Artist and The Descendants lead the list of Best Film nominees, joined by Drive, The Help, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The awards pay special attention to the year's outstanding British films, noting My Week With Marilyn, Senna, Shame, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, in particular. Also acknowledged are films by British writers, directors, or producers, films not in the English language, and best cinematography among others. The silent film The Artist leads in almost every category.

You may soon get to find out who your doctor is sponsored by. As part of the new health-care law, the Obama administration will require drug companies to reveal the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel, and entertainment. Nearly a quarter of doctors take cash payments from pharmaceutical and device companies, while nearly two thirds accept gifts of food, according to The New York Times. The new requirements will go into effect sometime after Feb. 17, when the public comment period ends.

They're back. Protesters from across the country rallied at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to condemn the influence of corporate money in politics, hoping their voices would be heard by lawmakers returning from vacation. Organizers were touting the rally, known as Occupy Congress, as the largest nationwide gathering since the movement began in September. A crowd of roughly 500 assembled on the west lawn of the Capitol in the morning. At midday, dozens swarmed congressional buildings and the group began a march from the Capitol to the White House, making a pit stop at the Supreme Court. By nightfall, the crowd grew to roughly 1,000 and four people were arrested—fewer than the movement had anticipated. The Secret Service said late Tuesday that someone had thrown a smoke bomb over the White House's fence.

Rescuers blasted holes in the side of the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship in a final attempt to get at anyone trapped inside. The number of people missing rose to 29, including an American couple. Six people are known to have died in the crash. The ship's owners blame Capt. Francesco Schettino for the disaster, saying he took the ship off course toward the island where it ran aground, apparently to come within sight of the head waiter's family home. After running aground, Schettino reportedly dithered to the point that his crew mutinied and began evacuating the boat themselves. Schettino is also accused of abandoning the ship before the evacuation is complete. He faces up to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.

After thousands of voters revolted over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s stripping public workers of their collective-bargaining rights last year, they’re taking the next step to get him out. Organizers of a sprawling campaign to recall Walker will deliver more than 1 million signatures to a state board, nearly twice as many as necessary, marking the beginning of an extended process that could lead to a recall election. The Democratic Party said it will deliver the 3,300 pounds of signatures Tuesday, and Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board will have 31 days to sign off on them.

When asked about the Obama administration blocking South Carolina’s voter-identification law, and his support for the controversial law, Rick Perry said he believes that Texas is under assault by the federal government, while “South Carolina is at war with the federal government.” He then launched into a tirade about President Obama’s “war on organized religion.”

Scary, but understandable statistic: in the last six years, the number of headphone-wearing people seriously injured or killed near roads or train tracks has tripled. In 2004–05 there were only 16 incidents, while the number hit 47 in 2010–11. The research was published in the journal Injury Prevention. The study, however, does have a flaw: it relies heavily on media reports.

Wednesday could be an unusually quiet one on the Internet if a growing number of sites go through with a threat to shut down. Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, and the Cheezburger network all say they'll go dark Wednesday in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill, which would require search engines and other providers to block access to sites that aid piracy, has become a flash point in a battle between Hollywood media companies and Silicon Valley tech companies. The White House came out against the bill on Saturday.

Standard & Poor’s has slashed its long-term AAA+ credit rating on Europe’s rescue fund following downgrades on nine euro-zone countries on Friday. S&P released a statement saying the latest downgrade was all but inevitable following identical cuts to the sterling credit ratings of France and Austria, two major guarantors of the bailout fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. Though the EFSF said the downgrade won’t reduce its $558 billion lending capacity, the European Stability Mechanism will replace it as a rescue fund. Meanwhile, Greece has been warned about a potential default if it doesn’t secure an agreement over bond holdings with private creditors, after talks broke down with the creditors on Friday.

Mitt Romney weathered attacks from all his rivals during Monday night’s debate as they tried to get in any final jabs before what could be the decisive primary in the GOP race. It may be too little too late: according to a new Washington Post-ABC national poll, Romney now has a 2–1 lead over Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, who are neck and neck for second place. Though Romney was the primary target of his opponents’ attacks, they've also been helping him by viciously attacking each other. Yesterday, Gingrich told voters that a vote for Santorum was a vote for Romney and then made fun of him for getting trounced in Pennsylvania. Santorum responded by pointing out Gingrich's losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. And everyone—including the audience—attacked Ron Paul for his criticism of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

A partial victory for Nigerian protesters came Monday after a weeklong general strike. President Goodluck Jonathan announced on Monday his decision to partly restore the fuel subsidy that he'd suddenly cut. Under the agreement, Nigeria's gas prices will drop to $2.27 a gallon from $3.50—though still far above the previous price of $1.70. Jonathan's decision to end the country's $8 billion fuel subsidy and effectively double the cost of gas enraged Nigerians, three fourths of whom live on about a dollar a day.

Fox News moderators shunted Ron Paul aside in Monday night’s South Carolina debate, and the aggressive crowd booed his response on whether or not assassinating Osama bin Laden was legal. Some commentators also thought Paul had a weak performance. That’s all right with Republicans, who are striving to portray Paul as an extremist who doesn’t represent the party. “South Carolina is a very strong military state,” said Gov. Nikki Haley, who has endorsed Romney. “Very strong military state, patriotic state, and so I don’t think that that part of his message resonates in South Carolina.” South Carolina GOP chairman Chad Connelly said Paul had campaigned less in the state than others. “I don’t know if he decided to play here less or anything. I’ve kind of been the one saying, ‘Please, come on in, get in the state.’”

A blizzard in the Northwest? Forecasters are predicting that a winter storm will hit the Northwest Tuesday, dumping up to 12 inches of snow on Seattle—which normally gets only 5.9 inches a year. Portland, which gets an average of 2.4 inches of snow a year, is expected to get up to 10 inches. Weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce said that this could be the worst storm to hit the area since 1985.

Stephen Colbert may not be able to get his own name on the South Carolina ballot, but he's found an empty spot: Herman Cain's. Colbert's super PAC—now called the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC—is now running an ad in South Carolina urging voters to vote for Cain, who filed in the state before suspending his campaign. "He's not a career politician. He's such a Washington outsider he's not even running for president," says the ad's narrator, showing clips of Colbert dressed as a superhero. The ad ends with Colbert doing an even slower version of the slow smile Cain ended his own ads with.

There seems to be little love lost between Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-nam, the North Korean heir's half-brother. Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, says his younger brother will fail. A book due out in Japan this week writes that Kim Jong-nam “sees his brother failing. He thinks he [Kim Jong-un] has a lack of experience, he's too young, and he didn't have enough time to be groomed.” Kim Jong-nam lives in exile in China and Macau. He enraged his father a decade ago when he got caught trying to sneak into Japan in order to visit Disneyland—though he says in the new book that he was exiled for speaking out against the country's military-first policy.

A Syrian member of Parliament who defected to Egypt said Tuesday that president Bashar al-Assad will stop at nothing to crush the uprising movement seeking to remove him from office. “There is an open budget allocated to the crackdown on the popular uprising and revolution,” said Imad Ghalioun, according to CNN. "There is no budget for the country but only money to serve the regime's security forces and its ‘ghost hit men.’” Syria’s uprising has lasted for 10 months, and the regime’s crackdown has resulted in 5,000 deaths.

Just a day after the country celebrated a national day of remembrance for his father, Martin Luther King III announced Tuesday that he was stepping down as president at the foundation formed to honor his father’s legacy. King will remain active with the foundation as a member of the board of trustees, but will also be working on other projects. His goal is to launch a new organization dedicated to principles of nonviolence, social justice, and human rights. MLK’s daughter, Bernice King, was named chief executive officer of the foundation.

It looks like Twitter could end up the definitive site on the Internet on Wednesday. The social-media site said Tuesday that it will not be joining in the blackout planned by sites such as Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and Reddit. The sites will shut down Wednesday to protest a bill aimed at ending online piracy known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Twitter has been a vocal opponent of the bill—and its Senate equivalent—but chief executive Dick Costolo said that participating in a political protest would be “foolish.” Wikipedia will shut down all of its English-language sites, a first since the site launched in 2001 and a decision the company said “wasn’t lightly made.” Google Inc., the world’s most popular search engine, will include a link on its homepage highlighting its opposition to the bill.

Couch potatoes, rejoice! Fast-food giant Burger King has announced that it will be making deliveries in select areas as part of a trial program that it may extend to the rest of its 7,500 outlets in a bid to bring in new customers. Hungry folks near 16 Burger King locations in Virginia and Maryland will be able to have it their way from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. starting Jan. 23 for an additional $2 delivery fee. Customers can place an order for a Whopper online or over the phone, but the company says homebodies with the munchies will still have to go to a franchise to get milkshakes, coffee, and breakfast foods.

The death of a New York City woman who was fatally sawed in an elevator may have been prevented if the building had followed safety inspections better, sources told DNAinfo on Tuesday. Suzanne Hart was killed Dec. 14 when she stepped halfway into an elevator and became pinned between the doors as it went up. The office building, at 285 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, had not notified the Department of Buildings about recent construction—meaning another inspection would have been done before the accident. City investigators said they would have most likely found fatal flaws in the elevator operating system that killed Hart. Since Hart’s death, the investigators have inspected thousands of elevators across the city and have deemed the accident a “site specific” one, stemming from “human error” and lack of proper “checks and balances.”

Most of the attacks against Mitt Romney lately have come from his fellow Republicans, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reminded the GOP frontrunner that once he wins his party's nomination it's the Democrats he'll be up against. At a Politico interview Tuesday, Pelosi took several swings at Romney, calling him "not exactly what you would call the first string of the Republican Party," and suggesting, "If the far right thought that Romney could win, they might be more enthusiastic about him. But they question what he stands for, and they don't think he's going to win." 

Just when Ron Paul thought he'd convinced America that he's not a racist, a new batch of controversial newsletters from the Texas representative's past have emerged to haunt him. The New Republic has published the latest slew of newsletters, which for the most part focus on issues of homophobia, racism, and conspiracy theories, despite Paul's having insisted that "probably 10 sentences out of 10,000 pages" of his newsletter series were problematic. The most recently recovered newsletters warn Americans to arm themselves in preparation for a coming race war, defend former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott's racist comments about her players, and suggest Israeli involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. 

Known for her rich Southern recipes, Paula Deen has had to decline sweet tea and pecan pie herself for years now—though she only today confirmed that she has type 2 diabetes. “I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement,” Deen, the host of Food Network’s Paula’s Best Dishes, told USA Today. “I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.” Deen’s detractors, including the globe-trotting Anthony Bourdain, have criticized Deen for keeping her disease secret for three years while continuing to serve up high-calorie fare. As if to make amends, 64-year-old Deen said she’ll be launching a campaign called “Diabetes in a New Light” in conjunction with drug maker Novo Nordisk.