Facebook rings opening bell from headquarters on IPO day

On its IPO day, Facebook rang the opening bell remotely from its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social network behemoth finished moving onto the 57-acre campus in December. Here’s a look at the massive campus

Molestation charges against Luke Pomersbach: Court to examine CCTV footage from hotel today

New Delhi:  A court in Delhi will examine the CCTV footage from a hotel in the city today to determine whether Luke Pomersbach, the 27-year-old Australian who plays for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, molested a woman and assaulted her fiancé there. Mr Pomersbach has said the charges against him are false. Here are 10 big facts on this case:

1) Mr Pomersbach was arrested on Friday morning by the Delhi Police on charges including "outraging the modesty of a woman". He has been granted interim bail till today.

2) Before leaving court, Mr Pomersbach told reporters that he is "disappointed with the false charges." The judge then asked for CCTV footage from the hotel.

3) The woman who has accused Mr Pomersbach of molesting her is a US citizen named Zohal Hameed. She broke down in court on Friday. Mr Pomersbach fainted for a few seconds in the court-room.

4) The complainant says her fiance, named Sahil Peerzada, lives in Mumbai and that they met Mr Pomersbach at a party on Thursday night at a five-star hotel in Delhi.

5) Mr Peerzada, according to his fiancee, tried to intervene and was attacked by the cricketer. Doctors attending to him at a Delhi hospital say the cartilage in his left ear has been crushed, and he has been operated upon. See photo of Mr Peerzada here.

6) Ms Hameed says the cricketer insisted on "tagging along" with her fiance and her when they decided to go to their room after the party. He then insisted they have a drink with him. When she refused and tried to exit the room, she says he grabbed her.

7) Hotel staff said they believe the couple invited Mr Pomersbach to their suite.

8) The party followed a match which was won by Mr Pomersbach's team against Delhi Daredevils.

9) Sidhartha Mallya, the Director of the Royal Challengers Bangalore, said to NDTV on Friday that he stands by his tweets on the case. Mr Mallya's tweets included references to meeting Ms Hameed at the party. "She was all over me last night and asked for me BBM pin, so if he was her fiance; she wasn't exactly behaving like a future wife." He also said on Twitter, "If Luke is in the wrong, then trust me he will face the necessary sanctions. But what this girl is doing is idiotic."

10) Sidhartha's father, liquor baron Vijay Mallya, speaking to NDTV said that his son is not a child and can defend himself. He also said that Mr Pomersbach will not play in the ongoing IPL tournament till the inquiry against the player is completed. 

Feds respond to Houston judge questioning Obama on health care

In responding to the request of a federal appeals judge in Houston, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday affirmed his department's belief in the time-honored concept of judicial review and said nothing in President Barack Obama's recent comments on a pending Supreme Court decision should be interpreted otherwise.

"Where a plaintiff properly invokes the jurisdiction of a court and presents a justiciable challenge, there is no dispute that courts properly review the constitutionality of Acts of Congress," Holder wrote in a letter to a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals that is reviewing a case from East Texas involving an obscure element of the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care law being challenged as unconstitutional. "The (Justice) Department has not in this litigation, nor in any other litigation of which I am aware, ever asked this or any other court to reconsider or limit long-established precedent concerning judicial review of the constitutionality of federal legislation."

Justice Jerry Smith, a member of the panel, told a government lawyer earlier this week that he was concerned about the president's comments on the upcoming Supreme Court decision and demanded that the Justice Department submit a three-page letter clarifying its position on the role of courts in reviewing federal laws. Smith claimed the president "has troubled many people" with his comment Monday in support of the health care law. "I just remind conservative commentators that for years, what we've heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law," Obama said.

Coast Guard cannon fire sinks Japanese ghost ship

OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA (AP) — The long, lonely voyage of the Japanese ghost ship is over.

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter unleashed cannon fire on the abandoned 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru on Thursday, ending a journey that began when last year's tsunami dislodged it and set it adrift across the Pacific Ocean.

It sank into waters more than 1,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Alaska, more than 150 miles from land.

The crew pummeled the ghost ship with high explosive ammunition, and the Ryou-Un Maru soon burst into flames, and began to take on water and list, officials said.

A huge column of smoke could be seen over the gulf as a Coast Guard C-130 cargo plane, sent to observe the sinking, dropped a buoy to monitor for any possible pollution from the sunken ship.

The Coast Guard warned mariners to stay away, and aviation authorities did the same for pilots.

In about four hours, the ship vanished into the water, said Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow in Juneau.

Officials decided to sink the ship rather than risk the chance of it running aground or endangering other vessels in the busy shipping lanes between North America and Asia.

The ship had no lights or communications system, and its tank was able to carry more than 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Officials, however, didn't know how much fuel, if any, was aboard.

"It's less risky than it would be running into shore or running into (maritime) traffic," Coast Guard spokesman Paul Webb said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency studied the problem and decided it is safer to sink the ship and let the fuel evaporate in the open water.

The ship was at Hokkaido, Japan, and destined for scrapping when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck the country in March 2011 triggered a tsunami.

The waves dislodged the vessel and set it adrift. In total, about 5 million tons of debris was swept out to sea.

The boat did not have any cargo aboard, Webb said. He said he didn't know who owned the Ryou-Un Maru, which had been traveling about 1 mph in recent days.

As the Coast Guard was readying to fire on the vessel, a Canadian fishing vessel, the 62-foot Bernice C, claimed salvage rights over the ghost ship in international waters.

Plans to sink it were halted so the Canadian crew could have a chance to take the stricken ship. A Canadian official with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press that the Bernice C was unable to tow it.

That delay, in part, prompted the cargo plane to return to Kodiak, Alaska, before the ship sank because the plane burned up fuel while circling the area monitoring the situation.

The Canadian boat left, and once it was about 6 miles from the Japanese vessel, the Coast Guard began to fire, first with 25 mm shells, then a few hours later with ammunition twice that size.

In the year since the tsunami, the debris from Japan has washed up on shores across the Pacific.

In January, a half dozen large buoys suspected to be from Japanese oyster farms appeared at the top of Alaska's panhandle and may be among the first debris from the tsunami.

State health and environmental officials have said there's little need to be worried that debris landing on Alaska shores will be contaminated by radiation.

The earthquake triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

State officials have been working with federal counterparts to gauge the danger of debris including material affected by a damaged nuclear power plant, to see if Alaska residents, seafood or wild game could be affected.