After Iran said earlier this week that it would allow inspectors into the country to look over its nuclear sites, satellite images showed trucks and earth-moving vehicles that could mean officials are scrambling to cleanup the remnants of any tests, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Diplomats told the AP that radioactive traces can remain at sites after a nuclear-weapon test is run. Two diplomats said they believed crews at the Parchin military site could prove damaging against Iran, which has been the source of an ever-growing standoff between itself and Western nations, as well as Israel. The satellite images come from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which had already identified Parchin as the location of suspected nuclear action after a series of explosions took place there in November.

The United Nations humanitarian chief said on Wednesday that the Baba Amr district of Homs is deserted after the massive assault launched against its residents by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The neighborhood had been considered one of the birthplaces of the uprising against Assad, and activists said the government is trying to cover its atrocities there. Wednesday’s visit to Baba Amr by U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos is the first time an independent observer has been allowed into Syria since the monthlong crackdown on Baba Amr began. Meanwhile, the country’s deputy oil minister, Abdo Hussein, defected on Wednesday, according to a video posted by activists. In the video Hussein declared, “I join the revolution.” He is the highest-level government official to defect from Assad’s regime so far. U.S. officials said Wednesday that President Obama is weighing military action in Syria.

Apple introduced its long-awaited iPad 3 at an event in San Francisco Wednesday, and the new tablet will feature a retina display—first revealed on the iPhone 4. The screen will have a million more pixels than HDTV for an incredibly sharp picture, as well as improved color saturation. The new iPad also boasts a high-resolution back camera, voice dictation, 4G LTE capability, and 10 hours of battery life. It will cost the same as the most recent iPad 2, which was $499 for a 16GB device. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple sold 15.4 million iPads in the last quarter alone.

The Gentleman From Georgia is counting on a little Southern hospitality as his campaign straggles at the end of the Republican pack after picking up only one Super Tuesday state. His campaign on Wednesday deep-sixed plans to stump in Kansas, and spokesman R.C. Hammond admitted that it’s going to be a long slog from here, telling reporters, “Everything between Spartanburg all the way to Texas, those all need to go for Gingrich.” Yet the campaign will soldier on, Hammond said, even as Rick Santorum’s campaign and a pro-Santorum super PAC breathe down the former speaker’s neck, urging him to duck out of the race post haste and not drive Republicans into Mitt Romney’s arms.

We wish we could say that the latest twist in investigations into News Corp.’s papers comes as a surprise. Two former Scotland Yard chiefs testified on Wednesday that their sons both gained “work experience” at News International, Rupert Murdoch’s publishing division. “It was a perfectly normal process,” said former Commissioner Ian Blair, “the kind of thing that would excite most 15-year-olds.” The nature of their experience wasn’t made clear, but the British usually equate the phrase with brief, unpaid internships. And while it’s hardly uncommon for kids to get internships through family connections, it may be further evidence of illicit ties between the Metropolitan Police and News Corp. Last week, it was revealed that former Sun and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks rode around for years on a police horse.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed into law Wednesday a controversial bill that requires women to have an abdominal ultrasound before having an abortion. The law will go into effect in July for abortion providers in the state. This bill had originally included a provision that called for women to have an vaginally invasive procedure known as a transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, but McDonnell had his party remove that provision. The ultrasound bill was part of a number of hotly contested anti-abortion legislation that included stripped state funding for abortions sought by indigent women carrying fetuses with profound and incapacitating deformities and would have given embryos full personhood—which would outlaw all abortions and even some forms of contraception if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The ultrasound bill had drawn fierce protests at the Capitol on Saturday, and at least 30 people were arrested.

The U.S. Treasury Department struck a deal on Wednesday with the American International Group, or AIG, to sell off $6 billion worth of stock—the most significant stake yet in the U.S. government’s bid to rid itself of its majority-shareholder position of the insurance company. Under the deal, AIG must pay off more than $8.5 billion in obligations. The government’s share in the company is currently about 77 percent and will be reduced to about 70 percent under the terms of the current deal. After 2008, both the Bush and Obama administrations awarded bailouts to AIG, with one of the pledges totaling $182 billion. The company reported a $20 billion profit for the fourth quarter.

After gleeful conservative grenade-chucker Andrew Breitbart passed away at age 43, rumors abounded that his untimely death may have had something to do with an announcement he made weeks earlier at CPAC to the effect that he had politically compromising videos from President Obama’s days as an Ivy Leaguer. Now, BuzzFeed reports that they may have dug up the video, posting a clip that shows Obama as the president of the Harvard Law Review speaking in support of a professor’s diversity protest at the school. The Breitbart.com post said that the full video will be aired on Fox’s The Sean Hannity Show Wednesday night. Compounding the sense that the video may turn out to be a dud, however, is the fact that portions of the clip as posted by BuzzFeed appeared in a PBS Frontline documentary titled ‘Dreams of Obama’ that first aired in January, 2009.

Gadzooks! Scientists said on Wednesday that the largest solar flare in five years is speeding toward Earth—and is on track to smack into the planet on Thursday. The cloud of sun matter vomited forth by our nearest star will hit the planet at 4 million miles per hour early on Thursday, scientists said, and has the potential to disrupt electrical grids and navigational equipment. “It’s hitting us right in the nose,” said one scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This most stellar of sucker punches is just part of the natural order of things on the cosmic scale, the professional stargazers said. The Earth has actually been going through a period of slow solar activity in the last decade.

Bobbi Kristina Brown, Whitney Houston’s 19-year-old daughter, will inherit everything from her mother, the pop star’s will revealed on Wednesday. While the document doesn’t mention any specific assets, it leaves all of Houston's furnishings, clothing, jewelry, and cars to her surviving children, and Bobbi Kristina is her only child. The will was signed on Feb. 3, 1993, about a month before Houston gave birth to Bobbi Kristina. Houston’s money will be put in a trust for her daughter until she turns 21. Additional funds will be allocated to her when she turns 25, and she will receive the remaining balance at age 30.

Police in Tulsa, Okla., have reported that a sheriff’s deputy along with two other people were wounded in a shooting Tuesday afternoon in a plaza outside a city courthouse and library. Police responded after reports came in of a person firing a gun into the air in the plaza. Two deputies returned fire, and the deputy, suspect, and a bystander were wounded in the exchange. While the status of the injured persons was not immediately made known, the deputy and bystander incurred only minor wounds, a police spokesman said. Police said they were not yet sure whether shots from the suspect or deputy injured the bystander.

After days of rumors, Snooki is coming out about what’s inside: she is indeed pregnant, and engaged to her boyfriend, Jionni LaValle. Her first thought on hearing the news was “Shit, I've been drinking!”  She added, “I was worried. It was New Year's Eve and we were in Vegas, so I did go crazy.” Snooki had previously denied speculation that she was engaged, saying her boyfriend had to buy her a giant ring first. She revealed the news on the cover of Us Weekly, to be published Friday.

William Heirens, Chicago’s infamous “lipstick killer,” has died in prison at the age of 83, more than 65 years after he was incarcerated. Heirens confessed in 1946 to three horrific murders in Chicago, which gained widespread media attention because of the scrawling in lipstick on the wall at the scene of the second victim’s murder: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.” The circumstances of Heirens’s confession and imprisonment, however, were disputed. He later claimed to have confessed only to avoid a death sentence, and there are claims that he was mistreated and forced to confess. Heirens was the first American to earn a four-year college degree while in prison, and he set up several education programs.

Rush Limbaugh has gained some support from an unlikely place: liberal talk-show host Bill Maher. Maher tweeted Tuesday, “Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh, but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting.” The Real Time host is among the few who are taking Rush’s apology to heart—at least 34 sponsors have pulled out of Limbaugh’s radio program, and Sandra Fluke, who was the target of Limbaugh’s “slut” comment, has rejected the mea culpa. Maher was first dragged into the controversy by Sarah Palin, who countered Obama’s support of Sandra Fluke with a call for him to return the $1 million that Maher, who she called a “rabid misogynist,” had given to the president’s super PAC.

Japanese carmaker Toyota announced on Wednesday a massive recall of 681,000 cars and trucks in the U.S. market to address potential problems, Reuters reported. Of the vehicles, 495,000 of them are Tacoma pickups, model years 2005 to 2009. The company is also recalling Camry midsize cars and Venza crossover vehicles. Toyota said it wasn’t aware of any accidents or injuries that the defects—which range from a faulty steering wheel part in the Tacoma and electrical resistance in the Camry and Venza—have caused to date. Owners are due to be notified over the next month and fixes are estimated to take a seamless 30 minutes.

An Iraqi-born mother is on trial for beating and burning her 19-year-old daughter because she refused to go along with an arranged marriage. Yusra Fahran, 50, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault, unlawful imprisonment, and resisting arrest. Fahran is accused of burning her daughter’s face and chest with a hot spoon while the victim’s sisters held her down. “I swear I didn’t hurt her, only slightly, just like any parent would do to their children,” Fahran told a judge on Wednesday. The victim’s father, Mohammed Altameemi, and older sister are also on trial for the same charges and have pleaded not guilty to the crimes. Court records show that the burning incident occurred last November, but that the whole family has exhibited a pattern of repeated violence against the teen. Police say Altameemi admitted to trying to kill his daughter in February, cutting her neck with a knife, until her older sister intervened. Afterward, the mother and sisters allegedly taped the victim’s mouth, bound her hands and feet with rope before beating and burning her. She was reportedly taken to a hospital after having an epileptic seizure.

Have we finally found the God particle? Physicists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois have found data that corroborates an experiment last December at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, that may have detected the Higgs boson, the hypothetical particle that gives objects their mass, commonly known as the “God particle.” That group found intriguing bumps in their data at masses of 124 billion electron volts and 126 billion electron volts, while the Fermilab team detected a bump in the same region. “Based on the current Tevatron data and results compiled through December 2011 by other experiments, this is the strongest hint of the existence of a Higgs boson,” said the Fermilab report. The boson is implied by the Standard Model of physics, which has been used for high-energy physics for the last several decades, but it has never been observed.

The Indianapolis Colts plan to allow Peyton Manning to become a free agent, sources told ESPN on Tuesday. The formal announcement will reportedly come at a press conference Wednesday. The four-time league MVP intends to continue to play, the source said, but the Colts have decided not to take on the $28 million bonus and four years remaining on his contract (NFL contracts are not guaranteed). Manning missed the 2011 season after an injury that required surgery on neck vertebrae, but reports are that his physical condition has considerably improved in recent months. Early rumors put the Arizona Cardinals as the frontrunner as to who might acquire Manning. The Miami Dolphins are also said to be in the running.

Two longtime members of Congress were forced to face off in a heated battle in Ohio after district lines had been redrawn. Well-known Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who made bids for the presidency in 2004 and 2008, was beaten out in the Ninth District by fellow Rep. Marcy Kaptur, another Democrat. Kaptur carried 94 percent of the vote in her home county compared with just 73 percent for Kucinich in his stomping grounds, with Kaptur winning four out of five counties in their contested district. Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in Congress, is projected to take on Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as “Joe the Plumber” from the 2008 campaign. Running in the primary as a Republican, Wurzelbacher led by less than 500 votes with nearly 90 percent of precincts reporting.

A prominent member of the amorphous hacker-activist collective Anonymous was reportedly turned by the FBI, leading to the arrest of five hackers in three countries. Prosecutors announced charges Tuesday against the men, spread across Britain, Ireland, and Chicago, and alleged that they have been engaged in attempts to steal information from the computer systems of U.S. companies and hack government websites. The officials alleged that the five were involved in the recent hacking of Stratfor, a Texas-based intelligence company that had documents leaked on the Internet after WikiLeaks got a hold of them. The FBI was led to the five men by an informer, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who was arrested in June and began cooperating with law enforcement.

An official at the Dover Air Force mortuary says he pushed to have the remains of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks buried at sea, but that he was overruled by military officials who insisted they be mixed with medical waste and handed off to a contractor. The contractor then incinerated the remains and dumped them in a landfill. “We fought the fight, but I had zero clout back then,” he said. “The decision was made at a higher level.” The official previously exposed other problems at the mortuary, including missing body parts. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered Pentagon officials to investigate the matter.

It’s looking a lot like Halloween down under. The Centre for Disease Control is warning residents of Katherine, Australia, to stay away from fruit bats, hundreds of thousands of which have descended on the town and which could carry a fatal disease related to rabies. Authorities have even closed down the main sports ground. More than 250,000 little red flying foxes flocked to the town, possibly attracted to native plants or driven by changing climate conditions. Meanwhile in the inland city of Wagga Wagga, the ground is covered in heaping white piles of spider webs. The webs are apparently a technique the spiders use to escape flooding, which recently hit Wagga Wagga.

February was very good to Mitt Romney, who raised $11.5 million in the shortest month, according to a campaign spokeswoman. Romney has been very successful at fundraising, having raked in more than $63 million as of the end of January—nearly 10 times the amount of his closest primary opponent—making it seem unnecessary to dip into his personal bank account to keep the campaign moving. "I don't have any plans with regards to my campaign finances at this stage other than to keep on raising the money necessary to go forward," Romney said, in response to a question about whether he'd consider funding the campaign with his own money. 

CEO Reed Hastings of Netflix has reportedly been meeting with cable companies to discuss partnerships that would involve tying online video streaming into existing cable services. According to sources familiar with the conversations who spoke to Reuters, Netflix may be added into a subscriber’s existing cable program, if some of the talks prove fruitful. A Netflix spokesperson declined to speak on talks the company has had with cable providers. Netflix has widely been seen as a threat to the traditional cable industry.

It’s not over yet. Mitt Romney claimed the biggest Super Tuesday win in Ohio, barely eking out a victory with 38 percent of the vote to Rick Santorum’s 37. Santorum, who won Tennessee, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, played up his narrow loss, telling supporters, “We keep coming back” and promising a hard fight in upcoming Southern states. Newt Gingrich won decisively in his home state of Georgia, while Romney took Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, and Alaska. Romney also won Virginia, but Santorum and Gingrich weren’t on the ballot there, and Ron Paul took 40 percent of the vote. Romney is far ahead in delegate tally, with about three times as many as his rivals, but the narrow victory in Ohio, where he vastly outspent the competition, shows his campaign is still vulnerable.

Several weeks after launching his campaign for May’s election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy sat for a grilling on a French television show and offered a litany of apologies for the controversial moves, both personal and public, that have damaged his popularity with the French people. Sarkozy explained that he spent the night of his 2007 victory in a blingy Champs-Elysées bar because his marriage was “exploding” at the time. He apologized for recently calling a voter a “stupid jerk” on the trail, and addresed several years-old offenses, including spending a postelection holiday on a billionaire’s yacht and trying to land his unqualified son Jean a job managing La Défense, Paris’s main business district.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, is in Damascus and on her way to the besieged city of Homs. Amos says her goal is to “urge all sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies,” but Assad has blocked Red Cross aid convoys from entering the besieged city, citing security concerns. The U.N. says more than 1,500 people from Homs have crossed the border into Lebanon to escape the violence. But that route may become more dangerous: the Syrian opposition says government forces targeted a bridge used by refugees fleeing to Lebanon. Yesterday President Obama called the situation “heartbreaking” but ruled out unilateral military action.

The conviction of Texas financier R. Allen Stanford yesterday was a long time in the making, reads a feisty Wall Street Journal editorial today: The Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating—and ignoring—evidence that Stanford was operating a Ponzi scheme since 1997. The SEC investigated his operation in 1997, 1998, 2002, and 2004, each time concluding it was a probably a Ponzi scheme and each time failing to do anything about it. Coincidentally, the official heading many of these investigations was Spencer Barasch, a senior SEC enforcer who later went to work for Stanford. Barasch has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle Justice Department charges he violated conflict-of-interest rules, but he continues to practice law, and the SEC is still mulling whether to let him return to the commission.

Singapore’s 200,000 maids and other domestic workers will finally get a break after the government mandated that they be allowed one day off per week. Office workers in Singapore have been guaranteed days off for years, but controversy arose when the state considered applying the same protections to domestic employees. Some Singaporeans argued that they wouldn’t be able to “control” their workers, or that maids would develop social lives and become pregnant. Human rights groups welcomed the reform, but said it does not address maids’ exclusion from Singapore’s labor protections. The government policy appears to be motivated by the loss of workers to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other locales, which provide stronger worker protection.

Newt Gingrich made clear on Wednesday that he isn’t calling it quits any time soon—because he’s not confident in the alternative candidates. If he felt Rick Santorum’s nomination and subsequent election were a sure thing, Gingrich says, he might back down. “If I thought he was a slam dunk to beat Romney and to beat Obama, I would really consider getting out,” he said on Bill Bennett’s radio show Wednesday morning. “I don’t.” Meanwhile, a top Santorum adviser told The Huffington Post last night, "The path is for [Gingrich] to move aside and let us have a one-on-one shot with Romney. That's the path."

The Italian branch of the hacking group Anonymous took down the Vatican’s website on Wednesday as a demonstration against the “corrupt” Catholic church. Anonymous targeted the Vatican a day after a high-profile bust of the group’s alleged leaders, claiming responsibility in a statement. “Anonymous decided to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world,” the statement reads. The group underscored that the attack was not against Christianity or Catholicism but rather against “the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church.” The group also accused the Church of harboring Nazi criminals and condemned the institution for “allowing its representatives to harass children.” 

President Obama is looking into the possibility of using military force to help protect the people of Syria, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Dempsey, who was joined by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in a hearing with the committee, made clear that the administration still believed that diplomatic and economic pressure was the best way to help protect Syrians from President Bashar al-Assad’s troops. The step came after Sen. John McCain became the first senator to openly call for military action on Monday, saying it was the “only realistic way” to stop the ongoing violence that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 7,500 civilians over the last year. But Panetta said force could spark a civil war and lead to an even worse situation. Both Dempsey and Panetta assured the committee that the Syria situation is far different than the one in Libya—saying the Syrians have four to five times the size air force as Gaddafi’s army had.