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Hundreds of people were evacuated in Arizona on Tuesday after a wind-whipped wildfire spread across 5000 acres in just seven hours.

More than 300 firefighters, along with multiple helicopters and aircraft, moved in to tackle the “extreme” blaze which started in “remote, rugged terrain” on the east side of Granite Mountain near Prescott, Arizona, officials said.

It is unclear what started the fire, but authorities said that they hadn't ruled out human cause.

Getty Images for The Guardian

Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings, the journalist best known for the 2010 Rolling Stone story that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, his employers at BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone announced.

He was 33.

"We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone," BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement Tuesday evening. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians."

Fellow reporters and others Hastings came across throughout his career took to Twitter to pay respects and remember the man known for his confident and fearless style.

Three years ago, Hasting's work became the focal point of Washington when Rolling Stone published his piece "Runaway General," which featured McChrystal, then head of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, critiquing how President Obama and his administration were conducting the war.

Days after the article was published McChrystal went to the White House to hand the president his resignation.

Hastings also wrote two books, "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," which was based on his time with McChrystal and military leaders in Afghanistan, and "I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story," the story of how his then-fiance was killed by a car bombing while serving as an aide worker in Iraq.

He is survived by his wife, Elise.

John T. Greilick / AP

Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley stands in Judge Cynthia Hathaway's courtroom at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday, June 18, 2013 as the judge instructs jurors to continue to work toward a verdict after they sent her a note saying they are "stuck". The judge declared a mistrial Tuesday after jurors failed to reach a verdict in the trial.

The jury hearing the case of a Detroit police officer accused of involuntary manslaughter for the death of a 7-year-old girl failed to reach a verdict on Tuesday, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial.

The jury sent a note to Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway saying little progress had been made during the three days of deliberations over the fate of Officer Joseph Weekley, who faced charges of felony involuntary manslaughter and careless discharge of a firearm causing death.

Hathaway asked the 12 jurors if any of them thought there was a chance they could reach a verdict, and only one juror responded yes.

"One out of twelve probably won't be enough," she said before declaring a mistrial and setting a new pretrial hearing date of July 25, 2013.

Anonymous / AP

Aiyana Stanley-Jones was shot in 2010 during a police raid.

Weekley had admitted to accidentally firing his gun during a raid on May 16, 2010, killing Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

He testified that Aiyana's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, hit his weapon, causing it to fire. Jones denied Weekley's claims.

Jones said outside the courthouse, "She's going to get justice because I believe in the next jury."

Throughout the case, advocates for Aiyana's family criticized the makeup of the jury, which consisted of 11 whites and only one African-American.

"From the start, the Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC) had no confidence in this jury that had only one African-American juror from a county that is over 42 percent African-American," the JAJC said in a statement following the hung jury.

The possibilities when it comes to marketing meat made from marijuana-fed animals are close to endless, but the man who came up with the idea has decided to simply call them “Pot Pigs.”

William von Scheneidau, owner and founder of BB Ranch in Seattle, didn’t come up with the idea to feed pigs and other animals weed while sitting around a bong in the basement with his buddies.

In fact, he doesn’t even smoke, he said.

Von Scheneidau said the notion came to him when he met the owners of a weed dispensary who told him that, ever since marijuana was legalized in Washington via popular vote last year, they've had extra stems, stalks, and leaves to get rid of.

He simply asked them if he could take what they were planning to throw out, as he once did with a farmer's rotting cantaloupes.

Von Scheneidau said he has always experimented with what he fed his animals and is even currently adding beer and vodka to their troughs.

The marijuana remnants are mostly fed to pigs, but because the farms von Scheneidau works with are free-range, other animals have access to the weed feed as well, giving a new meaning to the phrase “party animals.”

Whenever von Scheneidau introduces a new substance to animals’ diets, he makes sure to have a control group of animals that eat normally from the same family.

He said that the pigs that are fed the marijuana just lie around and barely lift their heads.

“I name all my pigs,” said von Scheneidau “and Ted told Tim they shouldn’t tell me,” whether or not they’re high.

The pigs’ laziness might contribute to the fact that those who eat the weed gain weight 20 percent faster than those who don’t, as one would expect, even though von Scheneidau said the pot pigs don’t actually consume any extra food.

The weight gain contributes to the marbled, fattier texture of the pork that is eventually processed and made into bacon, prosciutto, sausage, pork chops and pulled pork.

Von Scheneidau says that beyond a difference in consistency, people have described the weed-infused meat as “more savory” in “blind bacon tests.”

"The flavor of the fat is extraordinary, [customers] love the marbling of the fat," said von Scheneidau.

And while customers haven’t reported getting high while eating or cooking the pork, von Scheneidau said BB Ranch sells out of the pot pig meat before batches are even processed.

He said the laws are a little complicated right now, but once the dispensaries are able to sell more marijuana, he’ll have more access to what the customers — and the pigs — want.

The National Security Agency surveillance programs made public this month have helped foil more than 50 terrorist plots since Sept. 11, including one to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, top intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.

The officials appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and answered mostly friendly questions to defend the programs, which collect phone records inside the United States and monitor Internet communications overseas.

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director.

At least 10 of the foiled plots were “homeland-based threats,” he said.

Details of the surveillance programs became public after Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, provided documents about them to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Public officials have since called for his prosecution.

Alexander said he would provide details of all the foiled plots to the committee in secret Wednesday. Attempting to make a case that the surveillance programs are critical to protect Americans, however, the officials described several in public Tuesday.

In the stock exchange plot, the NSA used Internet surveillance to find an extremist in Yemen who was in contact with an operative in the United States, said Sean Joyce, deputy director of the FBI.

He said that intelligence agents were able to detect “nascent plotting” to bomb the exchange.

Joyce also said that NSA phone surveillance had led intelligence agents to someone in San Diego who was providing financial support to a terrorist group in Somalia. Joyce appeared reluctant to provide further details of that case.

The FBI official said that NSA surveillance helped stop a plot to bomb the New York subway system, a justification that public officials have previously used to defend the surveillance programs.

In that plot, Joyce said, the NSA intercepted an email from a terrorist in Pakistan in 2009 who was talking with someone in the United States about perfecting a recipe for explosives.

Joyce said that person turned out to be Najibullah Zazi, who later pleaded guilty in the plot and is in federal prison.

The programs also linked an American citizen in Chicago to the 2008 terror attacks on hotels in India and to a plot to bomb the offices of a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, Joyce said.

The American citizen in Chicago was David Headley, who earlier this year was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Headley had cooperated with U.S. investigators and foreign intelligence agencies.

Joyce said, however, that he could not pinpoint how important the surveillance programs were to stopping the plots.

“I think you ask an almost impossible question, to say how important each dot was,” he told one congressman.

Both officials insisted that the programs are critical to protecting the country, are limited and subject to rigorous oversight, and carefully protect the civil liberties of Americans. They stressed that intelligence agents do not listen to Americans’ phone calls or read Americans’ email unless they have a warrant, and said the secret court that monitors surveillance operations was not a rubber stamp.

President Barack Obama defended the programs in an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS on Monday. He stressed that it was important to him to set up checks on the system.

“On this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program,” he said, adding that “all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.”

Asked how Americans can be sure that the NSA can’t simply “flip a switch” and listen to a phone call, as opposed to gathering information about the length and phone numbers involved, Alexander said it was the NSA’s intention to “do this exactly right.”

“We have not seen one of our analysts willfully do something wrong,” he said.

In introducing Alexander, the committee chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said that Americans’ trust in government to protect the country has been damaged by “inaccuracies, half-truths and outright lies” about intelligence programs.

“It is at times like these when our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside,” Rogers said.

Alexander said that Snowden’s disclosures would have a “long and irreversible impact” on the security of the United States and its allies.

“This is significant,” he said.

Snowden, who left the country for Hong Kong before he revealed himself as the source of the leaks, said Monday in an Internet chat that the U.S. government could not cover up its actions by “jailing or murdering him.”

“Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped,” he said.

Joyce, the FBI official, was asked by Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., what was next for Snowden. After a pause, he said: “Justice.”

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 8:11 PM EDT

Bell County Sheriff's Office / Reuters

Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people and wounding 31 in a November 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, is pictured in an undated Bell County Sheriff's Office photograph.

An Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 and wounding nearly three dozen others at a Fort Hood, Texas, military post in 2009 has been denied a trial delay by a judge.

Major Nidal Hasan, 42, who has been allowed to represent himself, had requested a three-month postponement to his trial so he could prepare more. Military Judge Col. Tara Osborn refused the request Tuesday, and said jury selection was set for July 9 and was expected to last for four weeks; testimony will start Aug. 6 at the earliest. 

Hasan's court martial has been sidetracked numerous times by questions over his legal representation and the beard he has, which violates military dress code. Opening statements had been scheduled to begin on July 1.

Most of those killed in the shooting four years ago at Fort Hood, a staging base for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, were military personnel. Hasan was shot four times by civilian police after the attack.

Hasan, who was born in the U.S. and is Muslim, could face the death penalty in the trial. He has been charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder; 32 others were wounded.

Osborn ruled last week that Hasan could not use as a defense that he carried out the base shooting in an attempt to protect Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.

According to witnesses, a gunman in an army combat uniform opened fire in a packed medical building on Nov. 5, 2009, stopping only to reload his weapon. 

None of the victims posed an “immediate imminent threat” to Taliban personnel in Afghanistan, the judge said.

Although Hasan is representing himself, Osborn ordered his three former defense attorneys to remain on the case and to offer assistance to him if he requests help.

Hasan's trial was initially slated for March 2012, but was delayed twice because defense attorneys said they needed more time to prepare. It was delayed a third time last fall when Hasan appealed an order from then-judge Col. Gregory Gross that his beard be forcibly shaved if he didn't remove it before his trial. 

Gross was ousted from the case and his order was thrown out, and court proceedings resumed in December with the current judge.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Fort Hood suspect, defense attorneys at odds
• Judge bans Fort Hood suspect's defense strategy
• Judge rules Fort Hood suspect can represent himself

Patrick Semansky / AP

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, center, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on Monday.

FORT MEADE, Md. - The court-martial of the U.S. soldier accused of providing reams of classified documents to WikiLeaks in a case illustrating the challenge of keeping secrets in the digital age must decide whether tweets and Web pages can be admitted as evidence.

Lawyers for Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, who is accused of providing more than 700,000 files to the anti-secrecy website in the biggest breach of classified U.S. data in the nation's history, argued on Tuesday that Twitter postings offered by prosecutors do not meet the court's standards.

"Anyone can create a Web page...that looks like WikiLeaks or that looks like Twitter," argued defense attorney Captain Joshua Tooman when the government sought to admit a May 7, 2010 tweet from WikiLeaks seeking military Internet addresses, and the Web page of the Internet archive site archive.org that showed a 2009 WikiLeaks "Most Wanted" list of items it was seeking from the public.

Tooman said a government investigator had accessed the tweets indirectly, through Google, rather than directly through Twitter or WikiLeaks. He said the evidence failed to meet the test of authenticity since there was no way of knowing what the website looked like when the tweet or page was published.

Prosecutors argued those tweets, as well as one on January 8, 2010 from WikiLeaks saying it had an encrypted video of a U.S. air attack, were evidence of a leak and should be admissible.

Judge Colonel Denise Lind did not rule on the evidence. She ordered the trial into recess until a status hearing next Tuesday. The trial is scheduled to resume on June 26.

Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010 when WikiLeaks published the classified information. He faces 21 charges, the most serious being aiding the enemy, and faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

A man was arraigned on indictment for murder on Monday by a California grand jury for throwing his ex-wife over the side of a cruise ship, according to the Orange County District Attorney.

The indictment against Lonnie Loren Kocontes, 55, includes one felony count of murder for financial gain.

Prosecutors said that that Kocontes and his ex-wife, Micki Kanesaki, divorced in 2001 but lived together on and off for the next several years. They were also comfortable with traveling together and in 2006 went on a cruise that left from Spain.

That's when Kocontes is accused of strangling Kanesaki, throwing her body over the side of the ship into Italian waters — and then reporting her missing.

He later moved over $1 million from their joint bank accounts and the proceeds from the sale of their shared home into his own accounts and his new wife’s accounts, according to the DA.

According to the press release, the money transfer drew suspicions from the FBI and the Orange County Sheriff’s department later found additional evidence against Kocontes. He was arrested in February of this year.

Although a judge already ruled on May 29 that the state of California has the right to try the case since Kanesaki was a California resident, Kocontes will fight to have the case thrown out during a June 26 hearing, claiming that local authorities do not have jurisdiction to prosecute him, The Associated Press reported.

He did not enter a plea after his charges were read Monday.

If he is convicted, Kocontes faces a life sentence but would also be eligible for the death penalty, officials said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

AP

The official signature of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on a $5 bill, top, and Lew's signature on a 2011 memo.

Penmanship purists can relax: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has straightened out his signature.

When he was nominated for the post earlier this year, Lew was mocked for his John Hancock — an aimless series of loops that was compared to the white icing atop a Hostess cupcake.

The top finance official in the federal government was given the humiliating nickname Loopty Lew. Worse still, the treasury chief is one of two people whose signatures grace United States currency. President Barack Obama joked that he might devalue the dollar.

But the Treasury Department on Tuesday released Lew’s signature as it will appear on bills this fall, starting with the $5 note, and it’s a little more grown-up. In fact, it’s borderline legible.

The first name arguably looks more like “Paul” than Lew’s real first name, Jacob. But the middle initial is an unmistakably accurate “J,” and the last name is at least a close approximation of the real thing — an L, an E and the faintest beginnings of a W.

Asked to explain the dramatic change, a Treasury Department spokeswoman would say only that it’s common for secretaries’ signatures to evolve once they get the job and start practicing for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Reaction on the Internet, meanwhile, was mixed. Some people said the country had dodged an embarrassment. But others were nostalgic, having hoped that the zany original would lend some whimsy to the greenback.

Kevin Roose of New York magazine mourned on Twitter: “boOoOoOo.”