The politically volatile debate reflects a reality that's difficult for parents, including the president, to swallow: Quite a number of teenagers have sex. So how easily should they be able to get a pill that prevents pregnancy if taken soon enough after sex?

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration made it a little easier, saying anyone 15 or older could begin buying one brand, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription two years younger than the current age limit of 17 and that the pill no longer has to be locked behind pharmacy counters.

But it's far from clear whether that will happen. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York had given the FDA until Monday to lift all age limits on Plan B and a cheaper generic, mandating that emergency contraception be sold just like aspirin. Instead, by requiring that buyers prove their age at the cash register, the FDA decided to treat it like beer.

The Justice Department hasn't said whether it will appeal Korman's order and thus back FDA's new approach, and that leaves the whole issue in limbo.

"This is a truly bizarre and unprecedented situation," said American University law professor Lewis A. Grossman, a specialist in food and drug law.

On Wednesday, doctors' groups, led by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, urged the Obama administration not to let the FDA action be the last word.

Any over-the-counter access marks a long-awaited change, but it's not enough, said Dr. Cora Breuner of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports nonprescription sale of the morning-after pill for all ages.

"We still have the major issue, which is our teen pregnancy rate is still too high," Breuner said.

Even though few young girls likely would use Plan B, which costs about $50 for a single pill, "we know that it is safe for those under 15," she said.

Most 17- to 19-year-olds are sexually active, and 30 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds have had sex, according to a study published last month by the journal Pediatrics. Sex is much rarer among younger teens. Likewise, older teens have a higher pregnancy rate, but that study also counted more than 110,000 pregnancies among 15- and 16-year-olds in 2008 alone.

The White House sought Wednesday to put much as much distance as possible between President Barack Obama and this political hot potato.

"The president, the White House, did not weigh in on this decision," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the FDA's move.

Obama must balance his own instincts as the father of two school-age daughters with the wishes of numerous political constituencies, including women's groups whose influence runs deep within the Democratic Party. It was just last week that Obama became the first president to address Planned Parenthood in person, telling the abortion rights group that as long as women must fight to make their own health choices, "you've also got a president who's going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way."

Contraception advocates see a double standard. No one is carded when buying a condom, but under the FDA's decision they would have to prove their age when buying a pill to prevent pregnancy if that condom breaks.

"This isn't a compromise. This is wrong," said Cynthia Pearson of the National Women's Health Network.

Likewise, social conservatives were outraged by the FDA's move, saying it was important for parents and medical professionals to be involved in such decisions involving teens.

"This decision undermines the right of parents to make important health decisions for their young daughters," said Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council. She added that removing the prescription requirement meant "teens and women will avoid necessary medical screenings" that could detect serious problems.

The FDA had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over the counter in late 2011, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in an unprecedented move, overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 were physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

Ruling earlier this month in a lawsuit challenging that decision, Korman blasted the Obama administration for letting election-year politics trump science. The judge called the morning-after pill "among the safest drugs sold over the counter," and gave the government 30 days to lift all age limits.

Obama aides bristled at the suggestion that the FDA decision was an attempt at political compromise, insisting the FDA merely responded to an application filed by Plan B's manufacturer which sought the 15 age limit and over-the-counter sales.

At the same time, Carney signaled that a policy allowing 15-year-olds to buy the pill off the shelf would be more palatable to Obama than the prospect of 11-year-olds having unfettered access. Pointing to Obama's comments in support of Sebelius back in 2011, Carney said, "he referred to younger girls, and I believe so did Secretary Sebelius."

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists and Korman, in his ruling said has been discredited.

MIAMI (Reuters) - They're big, they're tough, and, presumably, some of them are gay, but so far not a single active NFL player has come out and said so. After NBA player Jason Collins broke that barrier this week, the National Football League is making sure it will be ready for any coming out party.

Earlier this year, at least three college football players said they had been asked about their sexual orientation during NFL recruitment interviews, sparking calls for the NFL to do more to fight discrimination.

Just hours before Collins' coming out statement was published by Sports Illustrated on Tuesday, the NFL - America's most popular sport, with $9 billion a year in revenue - released a workplace conduct statement' regarding sexual orientation.

"The NFL has a long history of valuing diversity and inclusion. Discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation is not consistent with our values and is unacceptable in the National Football League," league commissioner Roger Goodell says in the document.

League spokesman Greg Aiello told Reuters that the timing of the release was purely coincidental and that the document had been worked on for several weeks with no advance notice given to the NFL about Collins's impending statement.

The memo, sent to chief executives, club presidents, head coaches and general managers, highlights a tough policy on reporting acts of discrimination or harassment and makes clear that questions about sexuality are not permitted during recruitment interviews.

Collins' statement, and the reaction to it, has raised expectations that other gay athletes will feel the time is right to come out. Leading players in the NBA, including LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and top coaches such as Boston Celtics' Doc Rivers, expressed support for Collins.

Several reports have indicated that one or more NFL players may be close to coming out.

Earlier this month, Brendon Ayanbadejo, who played in the Super Bowl-winning Baltimore Ravens team last season, said up to four players were considering jointly revealing their sexuality.

"I think it will happen sooner than you think," Ayanbadejo told the Baltimore Sun.

"We're in talks with a handful of players who are considering it. There are up to four players being talked to right now and they're trying to be organized so they can come out on the same day together. It would make a major splash and take the pressure off one guy.

"The NFL and organizations are already being proactive," he said.

Ayanbadejo is a leading member of Athlete Ally, a group which brings together straight athletes in support of gay rights, and one of several gay rights groups that have been involved in behind-the-scenes talks with the NFL.

Former NFL player Wade Davis, who came out as gay after his career in the sport, believes that an American football locker-room is essentially no different than any other workplace.

"You are always going to have a smattering of players who aren't going to be comfortable with it but that's the same in any part of society, sports or otherwise," Davis told Reuters.

But Davis, who left the NFL in 2003 after trying his luck with Tennessee, Seattle and the Washington Redskins, believes there has been a real change in the attitude of players in the past decade.

"When I was playing there were really no conversations about what it means to be a gay athlete. I think the climate has definitely changed and I think also in society you have more people who are gay and lesbian who are coming out, so everyone pretty much knows another person who is gay."

But not everyone is convinced the NFL is ready.

"I don't think football is ready, there are too many guys in the locker-room and, you know, guys play around too much," former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, now a television analyst with NBC, told NBC Sports Radio on Tuesday.

"Hopefully one guy comes out of the closet and (will) be comfortable with himself," Ward said.

"I don't have anything against a gay football player or a gay person period, so if he does, he has support from me. I want people to live their lives for who they are and (they) don't have to hide behind closed doors to do that."

Shortly after the Collins announcement, Mike Wallace, a wide receiver Miami Dolphins, was criticized for a tweet that said: "All these beautiful women in the world and guys wanna mess with other guys, SMH (Shaking My Head)." He later deleted the message and apologized for any offense caused.

Wallace's reaction was not quite on the scale of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver who made headlines before this year's Super Bowl by saying he would not welcome a gay player into the team's locker-room.

Culliver spent a pre-Super Bowl media session with scores of television cameras pointed in his face as he repeated his apology for an hour.

Gay rights groups say that making the locker room ready requires more than just stamping down on homophobic comments on the field or in social media and involves a process of education.

Aaron McQuade, of gay rights group GLAAD, says the NFL has responded well to the group's suggestions that proscribing discrimination isn't enough on its own.

"We are part of a coalition that has been meeting with the NFL and speaking with them for almost a year now about ways to stop coming down hard on guys for saying something that they didn't think about and start educating them," McQuade told Reuters.

"We are still very early in the process but it's moving along fairly quickly," he added. "The NFL is absolutely committed to not just punishing the players that misbehave but actually educating the players about these issues."

(Reporting By Simon Evans; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Raptor's shares rose as much as 15.6 percent on Tuesday.

The drug, Procysbi, is designed to treat nephropathic cystinosis, the most common form of a disease known as cystinosis, in which toxic levels of cystine, a naturally occurring amino acid, build up in the body's cells and organs. The disease, which affects some 500 patients in the United States, is usually fatal by the age of 10.

Procysbi is a delayed-release formulation of cysteamine bitartrate, a drug sold under the brand name Cystagon by Mylan Inc. The drugs work by lowering cystine levels, potentially delaying kidney and other damage. Mylan's product is the current standard of care.

Raptor's drug is designed to be given once every 12 hours, instead of once every six hours for Cystagon.

The company's shares were up 7.3 percent to $7.03 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Earlier they rose as high as $7.67.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang and Phil Berlowitz)

By Jethro Nededog

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jim Rash hasn't let his Oscar for co-writing "The Descendants" go to his head.

"Oscar or no Oscar, it doesn't matter," Rash told TheWrap.

"It's like, 'You did that, great. Now, do it again' or 'Let's see if you got what it takes.' The pressure is always going to be there no matter what," he continued. "So I feed off that pressure, because obviously I want to do the best job as I can. But, it really doesn't mean anything. You can still write a piece of crap next time around."

He certainly didn't take the easy route when writing Thursday's episode of NBC's "Community," which features a body-switching "Freaky Friday" theme that throws the study group for a loop.

"Just randomly the nugget of 'Freaky Friday' was something that was in my head, like the idea," he explained. "Not surprisingly in the world of 'Community,' the writers were like, 'Oh my God, we talked about a body switching thing at some point.' Then we realized sort of in talking out loud this was a great opportunity to use that device to do the real emotional part of the story, which is obviously Troy and Britta and Abed will be sucked into that."

On the episode, titled "Basic Human Anatomy," Danny Pudi and Donald Glover play each other's characters. "They know each other so well as friends on and off-screen, they were actually recording their parts for each other. So, they were really giving each other homework basically. They really did study up."

And although it's only his first time writing for the comedy in its almost four seasons on-air, Rash made sure to include an acting challenge for himself, which doubled as revenge on co-star Joel McHale. Rash's Dean Pelton gets to switch bodies with Jeff (McHale) - kind of - and the actor proves he can do a pretty good impersonation of his co-star.

"I just like to give Joel s--t in general," the alum of L.A.'s Groundings Improv group said. "It was fun for me just to even do it. It's sort of like payback for me, because when we did the documentary episode and he got to 'play me' -- an exaggerated, horrible version of me for the video - I was always partly offended."

That's a writer's perk, but not all that Rash got out from the experience of writing the episode.

"It's hard, but it's a great ride," he said. "It was a dream come true. It's very simple, I wanted to do right by our writers and by. I hope I did. They were so supportive, it's really a team effort too. At the end of the day, it's people loving a show and doing their best to keep it going. All very good."

But new research finds the financial world doesn't just respond to the Internet; the Internet can also predict what the stock market will do. The research isn't the first to find such online clairvoyance. For example, Google may even be able tobefore doctors can, thanks to people's tendencies to self-diagnose using the search engine. Google searches can also forecast the .

The new study, however, takes the extra step of testing out how well stock-buying would go, using Google search trends as guidance. The result: a pretty nice return.

Googling the markets

University of Warwick Business School researcher Tobias Preis and colleagues had previously found a correlation between the number of Google searches for a company's name and the number of times that company's stock was bought and sold. However, that method couldn't predict a stock's price. []

Now, Preis and his colleagues have turned to broader search trends to try to predict the whole stock market's movements. Using publicly available data on search terms from Google Trends, the researchers tracked 98 terms, many of them finance- or economics-related, such as "debt," "crisis" and "derivatives" from 2004 to 2011. They then compared the searches to the closing prices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a major stock-market index.

To test whether the terms searched in the week prior to any given closing day could predict the Dow Jones, the researchers invented a pretend investing game. If searches for financial terms went down, they opted to buy stocks and take a "long" position, holding on to the stocks and waiting for their value to go up.

If searches for financial terms went up, the researchers instead chose to "short" the market a strategy that allows buyers to sell stocks they don't own, with the understanding that they will buy the stocks later at a lower price in essence, gambling that thein value.

Worried searchers

The reasoning behind the game was simple. If people get anxious about the stock market, they will likely seek out information on financial issues before trying to dump their stock. Thus, finance-related Google searches should go up before a stock market decline.

That's exactly what the researchers found: An uptick inon finance terms reliably predicted a fall in stock prices.

"Debt" was the most reliable term for predicting market ups and downs, the researchers found. By going long when "debt" searches dropped and shorting the market when "debt" searches rose, the researchers were able to increase their hypothetical portfolio by 326 percent. (In comparison, a constant buy-and-hold strategy yielded just a 16 percent return.)

"Trends to sell on the financial market at lower prices may be preceded by ," the researchers write today (April 25) in the journal Scientific Reports. "During such periods of concern, people may tend to gather more information about the state of the market. It is conceivable that such behavior may have historically been reflected by increased Google Trends search volumes for terms of higher financial relevance."

Nevertheless, the average day-trader might find the strategy tough to implement, Preis said.

"This is something I wouldn't recommend to do without testing this very carefully," Preis told LiveScience. For one thing, markets have a tendency to adapt. If everyone starts using Google search terms to try to game the system, the strategy will become less effective.

For another, the financial terms used by the researchers may no longer be the best predictors of how buyers and sellers are feeling.

"You would need to find a way to identify, on the fly and in real time, what are the emerging topics that are relevant to markets?" Preis said.

The findings are scientifically "truly exciting," Preis said, because they have implications far beyond the stock market. Online chatter could help predict disease spread, civil unrest and political elections, he said. And Google is only the beginning, he added. Wikipedia, for example, provides open-source information on how many people view specific articles hour-by-hour, making the online encyclopedia another potential predictor of stock markets and other real-life behavior.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on and . Follow us , & . Original article on LiveScience.com.

Matt Kenseth and Joe Gibbs Racing were no exception, getting hit with one of the largest penalties in NASCAR history Wednesday after the engine from Kenseth's race-winning car at Kansas failed a post-race inspection. The team had nothing to do with the error, and manufacturer Toyota immediately accepted responsibility for one of eight connecting rods failing to meet the minimum weight requirement by 3 grams less than an empty envelope.

"We take full responsibility for this issue with the engine. JGR is not involved in the process of selecting parts or assembling the Cup Series engines," Toyota Racing Development President Lee White said.

It's been a busy season for NASCAR discipline. In February, Nationwide Series driver Jeremy Clements was suspended after an apparently insensitive remark to an MTV blogger and Denny Hamlin was fined $25,000 for criticizing the new Gen-6 race car.

But in the past week, NASCAR has levied more than $450,000 in fines, suspended nearly a dozen crew members for upcoming points races as it punishes teams for rules violations involving the cars themselves.

Kenseth was stripped of everything but the trophy from Sunday's win at Kansas.

"Anything to do with the engine, the fuel or the tires is going to be bad," said rival driver Kevin Harvick, who appeared with Clint Bowyer and Elliott Sadler on Wednesday in a softball game between Dover International Speedway and Pocono Raceway.

"It's always been that way. It's kind of one of those pet peeves of NASCAR."

Kenseth was docked 50 driver points in the standings he earned only 48 points for the victory and NASCAR also erased the three bonus points he earned for the win that would have been applied in seeding for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. In addition, the victory will not be credited toward his eligibility for a wild card berth in the Chase.

So, although Kenseth has two wins on the year, the Kansas win does not count in any form toward Chase eligibility.He lost his pole award, too, which could hurt eligibility for next year's Sprint Unlimited exhibition race.

The penalty to Kenseth, who held off Kasey Kahne of Hendrick Motorsports to earn his second win of the season, dropped him from eighth to 14th in the standings.

NASCAR also suspended crew chief Jason Ratcliff for six races and fined him $200,000. And in a rare move, car owner Joe Gibbs had his owner's license suspended for the next six races and he won't earn car owner points during that time. He also was docked 50 car owner points while Toyota, which supplies the JGR engines through Costa Mesa, Calif.-based TRD, lost five points in the manufacturer standings.

JGR said it would appeal.

"It is our understanding that one of the eight connecting rods on the engine was ruled too light," the statement said. "We are working with our partners at TRD on this issue."

White said Kenseth gained no advantage from the light rod.

"It was a simple oversight on TRD's part and there was no intent to deceive, or to gain any type of competitive advantage," White said. "Toyota is a company that was built on integrity, and that remains one of the guiding principles of the company. The goal of TRD has always been and will continue to be to build high-performance engines that are reliable, durable and powerful, and within the guidelines established by NASCAR."

Elliott Sadler, in his first season driving for JGR's Nationwide Series team, felt for teammate Kenseth.

"It's tough if you're Matt because you don't have anything to do with the motor. That's a TRD deal. It's not a Gibbs deal," Sadler said. "At Gibbs, we don't even touch the motor. TRD brings the motor in and puts it in. We don't even get to touch it. That's a rule. A Gibbs employee doesn't even touch that."

It's the second severe penalty against a Sprint Cup team levied by NASCAR in as many weeks.

It was Penske Racing and defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski who were punished last week after NASCAR said it found unapproved parts in the rear suspension of Keselowski and Joey Logano's cars at Texas. NASCAR docked 25 points each the drivers, fined the crew chiefs $100,000 each and suspended seven Penske employees for six races. Penske Racing's appeal is scheduled for May 1.

Those penalties were for alterations to the body of the car, particularly in an area NASCAR has been working the last year to police after teams found a way to manipulate the skew of the cars last season. Team owner Roger Penske has maintained the team was not cheating, but "working in a gray area" of the rule book.

It's not clear if that argument will fly before the three-member appeal board, and the 2013 rule book was specifically tightened this season to add language specific to the rear suspension systems.

In the case of JGR and the engine, illegal is illegal and there is no gray area.

NASCAR has proven that through penalties before. The last violator, Carl Long, was severely punished when he was found to have an illegal engine at the 2009 All-Star Race. Long was docked 200 points which would be about 50 points under the current points system fined $200,000 and suspended for 12 races.

His suspension was reduced to eight races on appeal, but Long has said he is unable to pay the fine and can't work in Sprint Cup until he settles the debt.

"We've always known the engine and tires are sacred ground. You don't mess with the engine or the tires," said former crew chief and current Fox analyst Larry McReynolds, who added that all eight connecting rods would have been light if TRD was trying to cheat.

"This was pure human error," McReynolds said. "But in NASCAR's defense, they can't completely determine intent or non-intent. They absolutely should appeal. I'd primarily appeal Ratcliff's suspension. He was an innocent bystander in this. The engine is a different deal than the rest of the car. If I was Joe Gibbs, I'd be pretty ticked off about losing my crew chief under these circumstances. This was an error but an enormously costly one."

JGR has the means to pay the fine and the personnel to recover from this setback. The appeal would likely be to reduce the penalties on the argument it was TRD that erred and the team had no control or access to assembly of the engine.

Clint Bowyer, a Toyota driver for Michael Waltrip Racing, said it's unfortunate so many employees are punished by NASCAR for one infraction.

"For the governing body, that's a difficult situation knowing that a lot of guys that you're penalizing don't necessarily have anything to do with what's inside those frame rails," Bowyer said. "It's tough. It's unfortunate for Matt. Obviously it was a shock to all of us."

Kenseth is unlikely to get back his bonus points. NASCAR stripped Carl Edwards of his 10 bonus points under an older scoring system for not having a cover on his oil tank after a 2008 win at Las Vegas. The victory stood, but Edwards was not able to carry the 10 bonus points into the Chase. His crew chief was also suspended six races.

___

AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the , a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests.

The findings, presented Wednesday (Dec. 5) here at the , are the latest volley in an ongoing debate over whether an asteroid or volcanism killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago in the mass die-off known as the K-T extinction.

"Our new information calls for a reassessment of what really caused the K-T mass extinction," said Gerta Keller, a geologist at Princeton University who conducted the study.

For several years, Keller has argued that volcanic activity killed the dinosaurs.

But proponents of the Alvarez hypothesis argue that a giant meteorite impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, around 65 million years ago released toxic amounts of dust and gas into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun to cause widespread cooling, choking the dinosaurs and poisoning sea life. The meteorite may impact may also have set off volcanic activity, earthquakes and tsunamis. []

The new research "really demonstrates that we have Deccan Traps just before the mass extinction, and that may contribute partially or totally to the mass extinction," said Eric Font, a geologist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, who was not involved in the research.

Sea cockroach

In 2009, oil companies drilling off the Eastern coast of India uncovered eons-old lava-filled sediments buried nearly 2 miles (3.3 kilometers) below the ocean surface.

Keller and her team got permission to analyze the sediments, finding they contained plentiful fossils from around the boundary between the Cretaceous-Tertiary periods, or K-T Boundary, when dinosaurs vanished.

The sediments bore layers of lava that had traveled nearly 1,000 miles (1,603 km) from the Deccan Traps. Today, the volcanic region spans an area as big as France, but was nearly the area of Europe when it was active during the late , said Adatte Thierry, a geologist from the University of Lausanne in France who collaborated with Keller on the research.

Within the fossil record, plankton species got fewer, smaller and maintained less elaborate shells immediately after lava layers, which would indicate it happened in years after the eruptions. Most species gradually died off. In their wake, a hardy plankton genus with a small, nondescript exoskeleton, called Guembilitria, exploded within the fossil record. Keller's team found similar trends in their analysis of marine sediments from Egypt, Israel, Spain, Italy and Texas. While Guembilitria species represented between 80 percent and 98 percent of the fossils, other species disappeared.

"We call it a disaster opportunist," Keller told LiveScience. "It's like a cockroach whenever things go bad, it will be the one that survives and thrives."

Guembilitria may have come to dominance worldwide when the huge amounts of sulfur (in the form of ) released by the Deccan Traps fell into the oceans. There, it would've chemically binded with calcium, making that calcium unavailable to sea creatures that needed the element to build their shells and skeletons.

Around the same time in India, fossil evidence of land animals and plants vanished, suggesting the volcanoes caused mass extinctions on both land and in the sea there.

Global impact

In past work, the team has also found evidence at Chicxulub that casts doubt on the notion of a .

Sediments containing iridium, the chemical signature of an , show up after the extinction occurred, contradicting the notion that it could have caused a sudden die-off, Keller said.

A meteorite impact also would not have produced enough toxic sulfur and carbon dioxide to match the levels seen in the rocks, so it may have worsened the mass extinction, but couldn't have caused it, she said.

"The meteorite is just too small to cause the extinction."

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While dinosaurs dominated the land, a variety of reptiles reigned in the seas, and includedand the . In the new study, scientists investigated another similar beast extinct carnivores known as , generally thought of as gigantic finned marine lizards similar and perhaps even related to present-day monitor lizards.

The mosasaur fossils were unearthed starting in 1999 from an open-pit mine in the Bakony Hills of western Hungary. The researchers discovered several 84-million-year-old specimens, ranging from small juveniles to adults 20 feet (6 meters) long that had limbs like a land-dwelling lizard, a flattened, crocodilelike skull, and a tail unlike other known members of the mosasaur family.

The fossils were discovered in areas that were once freshwater floodplains home to fishes, amphibians, turtles, crocodiles, terrestrial lizards, pterosaurs, dinosaurs and birds. This newfound reptile appears to be the first known freshwater mosasaur, an animal comparable to modern river dolphins now seen in the Amazon, Ganges and Yangtze rivers.

The new species is named Pannoniasaurus inexpectatus. "Pannonia" refers to the part of Hungary it was found in, "saurus" means lizard, and "inexpectatus" refers to the unexpected occurrence of this

mosasaur in freshwater environments. []

"The size of Pannoniasaurus makes it the largest known predator in the waters of this paleo-environment," said researcher Lszl Makdi, a paleontologist at the Hungarian Natural History Museum.

The evolutionary history of mosasaurs suggested by these new findings is remarkably similar to that of whales and dolphins, Makdi told LiveScience.

"To the best of our knowledge, the ancestors of mosasaurs and of some related reptiles moved from land to aquatic realms at least 100 million years ago. Whether these were marine or freshwater environments, it is [uncertain], however some finds in Japan suggests the latter," Makdi said.

"Then sometime between this event and 85 million years before present the age of our locality in Hungary some primitive members of the already-marine mosasaurs adapted to freshwater life. Pannoniasaurus represents these. This scenario is very similar to the evolutionary history of cetaceans whales, dolphins."

The researchers plan to investigate new Pannoniasaurus fossils as they pop up in the hopes of learning more about the beast's biology, such as how it moved and what it might have eaten, Makdi said.

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Dec. 19) in the journal PLoS ONE.

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Bork died in a northern Virginia hospital where he had been treated for an infection, said Leonard Leo, executive vice-president of the conservative Federalist Society.

Nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Bork was rejected by the Democratic-led U.S. Senate over his conservative judicial philosophy. He became a potent symbol to conservatives.

"To bork" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002 with the definition, "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, especially in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way."

"My name became a verb," Bork told CNN in 2005. "And I regard that as one form of immortality."

Bork was already known to Americans as a figure in the Watergate scandal - the man who carried out Richard Nixon's order to fire the special prosecutor in 1973's "Saturday Night Massacre" - when he was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Within 45 minutes of his nomination on July 1, 1987, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy took to the Senate floor to denounce him as a man who wanted to outlaw abortion, ban the teaching of evolution and revive racial segregation. Bork said not a line of the speech was accurate.

After a fierce confirmation fight, the Senate in October rejected Bork 58-42, the largest margin of defeat for any Supreme Court nominee and a big loss for Reagan.

JUDICIAL CONSERVATIVE

Bork's judicial conservatism, and especially fears he might vote to overturn abortion rights, led liberal, civil rights and feminist groups to join ranks against him.

They charged that the burly, goateed Bork, then a federal judge, held views too extreme for the highest court. They warned he might cast the decisive vote to overturn the court's 1973 abortion rights decision and endanger anti-segregation rulings of the 1950s and 1960S, despite Bork's assurances he would not disturb "settled law."

His supporters saw a political witch hunt. In later court fights, they used memories of the Bork hearings to rally their conservative supporters.

On Wednesday, supporters remembered him as a pioneer in a school of constitutional thinking devoted to the text and original meaning of the Constitution.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a statement released by the Federalist Society, called Bork one of the most influential legal scholars of the last 50 years.

Speaking to Reuters, Leo called Bork "one of our country's fiercest and most articulate defenders of the Constitution as it was written."

Like many other conservative justices - although more outspoken and in great recorded detail - Bork held that judges should interpret the law narrowly according to the "original intent" of the Constitution's framers rather than making new law, which they called judicial activism.

At his confirmation hearings, Bork's long record of writings and decisions as an active jurist made him vulnerable to attack. Among the most controversial were his views that the Constitution contained no generalized right to privacy nor unlimited authorization of free speech.

He did little to help himself in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, appearing cold and ideological.

But he fired back at critics, denying he wanted to "turn back the clock" and saying he was the victim of a liberal public relations campaign that distorted his record.

"The enormous amount of publicity and public relations that was going on was really unprecedented," Bork said later.

He admitted the White House was caught by surprise by the intense opposition and echoed complaints by conservatives that Reagan should have done more to fight for the nomination. Justice Anthony Kennedy ended up being confirmed to the court in February 1988.

Bork's defeat for confirmation to the Supreme Court was "the decisive moment in politicizing the process of judicial selection," said Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School and a former federal judge who testified on Bork's behalf at the 1987 hearings. "The scurrilous attacks on his views and his character set a new low for the process, and has poisoned the atmosphere for judicial confirmations ever since."

Bork was bitter for years afterward and conservatives regarded him as a martyr to liberal activism and unreason.

Three months after the Senate quashed his nomination, Bork resigned as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after six years of service and went into private law, scholarship and commentary, supporting conservative causes for years to come.

One stint was as an "expert consultant" to television broadcasters covering the 1991 confirmation hearings for another controversial Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas.

Bork was also active in the background during the attempt the impeach President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, lending his expertise and support to the impeachment process.

Before his nomination debacle, Bork had been best known for the brief role he had played as U.S. solicitor general at the Justice Department in a notorious 1973 Watergate episode.

He carried out Nixon's order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was demanding the release of Oval Office tape recordings Nixon wanted kept secret.

Bork's immediate superiors - Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy - quit rather than fire Cox, stirring public outrage in what became known as "The Saturday Night Massacre."

The backlash ultimately led to Nixon's resignation, under threat of impeachment, in August 1974.

Bork later said he followed Nixon's order to prevent "massive resignations" at the Justice Department and restore order there.

Bork remained outspoken on judicial nominations. In 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Bork was a leader among conservatives in opposing Miers.

He called her a "disaster," largely because of her lack of conservative credentials and constitutional-law experience. Miers pulled out and Bush nominated Samuel Alito, who was confirmed by the Senate in January 2006.

Robert Bork was born in Pittsburgh on March 1, 1927, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1953. Before becoming a judge, he was a professor at Yale Law School, where he supported students who came together to form the Federalist Society, a legal movement that aimed to counter what they viewed as the intrusion of judges into people's lives. He converted to Catholicism in 2003.

In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appointed Bork co-chair of his Judicial Advisory Committee, to advise the campaign on judicial nominations and legal policy questions.

(Additional reporting by Terry Baynes and Joan Biskupic; Editing by Eddie Evans and Vicki Allen)

The , which is about 40 seconds long, combines 64 radar images taken Wednesday and Thursday (Dec. 12 and 13) by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. On those days, Toutatis was about 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) from Earth, or about 18 times farther away than the moon is.

The new radar images which have a resolution of 12 feet (3.75 meters) per pixel show the 3-mile-wide (5 kilometers)in striking detail. Toutatis is revealed to be an elongated, irregularly shaped object with multiple ridges, researchers said. Strange bright glints may indicate surface boulders, they added.

The video also sheds light on how Toutatis moves. The asteroid spins about its long axis every 5.4 days and wobbles through space like a badly thrown football, scientists said.

Toutatis never posed aon its recent flyby, and researchers say there is no chance it will hit our planet over the next four centuries or so. (Beyond that time, the asteroid's orbit cannot be accurately computed.)

Nevertheless, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., lists Toutatis as a potentially hazardous object, meaning that it could pose a risk to Earth at some point in the future.

Toutatis would cause catastrophic damage if it ever did slam into Earth, potentially extinguishing humanity and many other species. In general, scientists think a strike by anything at least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide could have global consequences, most likely by altering the world's climate for many years to come.

For comparison, the asteroid thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was an estimated 6 miles (10 km) across.

Asteroid Toutatis makes one trip around the sun every four years. Its next close encounter with Earth will come in November 2069, when the space rock will fly safely by at about 1.8 million miles (3 million km), or 7.7 Earth-moon distances.

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