The State Department says the potential for terrorism is particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa. It says an attack could occur or come from the Arabian Peninsula.

The department says in a statement that al-Qaida and its affiliated organizations "continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond."

The travel alert comes a day after the U.S. announced that it would shutter its embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world on Sunday, and possibly longer.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

The United States is closing its embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world on Sunday after receiving an unspecified threat, officials said.

The threat was linked to al-Qaida and focused on the Middle East and Central Asia, said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

State Department officials said Thursday they were acting out of an "abundance of caution."

Spokeswoman Marie Harf cited information indicating a threat to U.S. facilities overseas and said some diplomatic facilities may stay closed for more than a day.

Sunday is a workday in the Muslim world. American diplomatic missions in Europe, Latin America and many other places are closed on Sunday.

Royce said Friday he supported the State Department decision to "protect our personnel on the ground."

The State Department issued a major warning last year informing American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world about potential violence connected to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Dozens of American installations were besieged by protests over an anti-Islam video made by an American resident.

In Benghazi, Libya, the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed when militants assaulted a diplomatic post. The administration no longer says that attack was related to the demonstrations.

The view may look bright at the top GOP echelon, but that does not appear to be the attitude of the rank and file. If anything, there is deep unease among activist conservativesthe sort who trudge to the polls in the bitter winters of Iowa and New Hampshireabout the state of the race. At several recent functions in Washington, attendees expressed great enthusiasm for unseating Obama, but hardly anyone was thrilled with their likely standard bearers.

Is it time for the GOP to start panicking yet?

Cains tortured and contradictory response to sexual-harassment allegations was made even worse by the reckless, not-ready-for-prime-time effort at deflection. Rick Perry was behind this! No, it was Rahm Emanuel! No, it was a massive media conspiracy! No, it was Professor Plum with the lead pipe in the billiards room. That Cain remains floating atop the GOP field is less a tribute to his staying power than a cruel indictment of the remaining field of frivolous flops. When you cannot lure voters away from a man who is accused of several counts of disreputable behavior and who seems to lack an understanding of many basic issues, fromto , youve got yourself a problem.

As for Romney, he has finally started to outline some specifics to his proposals, most notably courageous plans to . But even this effort posed an interesting problem for him. If another candidate had talked freely about raising the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security and turning Medicaid into block grants, there might have been a larger outcry. With Romney, there really wasnt. Even the media seem to have decided that nothing the risk-averse, milquetoast Romney says really has anything to do with his presidency. All his ideas feel like consultant-fed pablum free to be ignored the minute the polls turn. When 72 percent of Romneys own voters say they could easily , youve got a problem.

Which means the GOP nominating process may yet take some surprising turns. Overall, about half of Republicans surveyed in a recent Washington PostABC News poll said they may yet change their allegiance in the race. That feels about right. In fact, the number may even grow higher as voters continue to shop for the least unacceptable of the lot.

Of the main contenders, only Perry and Newt Gingrich have demonstrated any signs of resurgence. Since the GOP debates commenced, Gingrich has steadily crept back into double digits in most polls, based on something surprising: ideas. He has little money, he has few ground troops, he has unleashed no attack ads, but he has answered questions clearly, forthrightly, and knowledgeably. And it is not inconceivable that otherseven a Bachmann or a Santorum or a Huntsmanmay finally find their day in the sun.

This year feels very different, as if anything could happen. Who knows: if an establishment favorite like Romney falters early, it is always possible that an entirely new candidate might yet decide to jump into the contest. Hoover, FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, and LBJ each won presidential primaries as write-in candidates. If things continue to be so unsettled, its not impossible that someone may decide to repeat that feat in 2012. Just dont anybody give that idea to Donald Trump.

Pick a star and you can find memorabilia with a supposedly verified signature.

South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney. Ohio State's Braxton Miller. Oregon's De'Anthony Thomas. Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater. Alabama's AJ McCarron. The list goes on and on.

The difference is ESPN has reported the NCAA is investigating whether Manziel, the Texas A&M quarterback, got paid to sign autographs, which would violate amateurism rules. That has led to other schools being asked questions about whether their players earned money for signatures.

If the allegations against Manziel, made by unidentified sources to ESPN, are proved true by the NCAA, his eligibility for the coming season could be in doubt as well as his status as a Heisman winner.

ESPN reported that a top autograph authenticator had authenticated nearly 1,000 Manziel autographs.

Brandon Steiner of Steiner Sports, which is the official collectible and memorabilia company of the NBA, the New York Yankees and Notre Dame, among others, said his company does not do business with college athletes.

He said Manziel would likely be able to sign a contract with a collectibles company of at least $100,000 after he went pro.

"I know there is a vibrant Heisman Trophy collectible audience out there," he said.

A market flooded with Manziel autographs could cost him money later, Steiner said.

"It creates market confusion and takes a lot away from the category," Steiner said Wednesday.

Other college athletes might want to take note.

Two sports websites bustedcoverage.com and goodbullhunting.com found what appeared to be dozens of authenticated items signed by Clowney online, and that led to questions for South Carolina officials.

Associate athletic director Chris Rogers said Wednesday the school's compliance office has looked into the Clowney autographs on eBay and found no violations had occurred.

"The websites that we've looked at and the pictures and autographs and items that we've found over the last academic year, we've not had any issues to suggest that anything impermissible had occurred," Rogers said.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said school officials have determined Miller had not profited from the numerous items found online with his signature. Smith said the quarterback signed many autographs at a Big Ten preseason kickoff luncheon. Presumably fans or memorabilia brokers then went and sold items they got autographed for free.

"We've already looked at it," Smith said. "There's no issue there."

Louisville came to a similar conclusion.

"We are aware of many of the items for sale online that have been autographed by several of our student-athletes with remaining eligibility. As we are required to do by NCAA rules, we regularly review these items and send correspondence to the seller(s) requesting they remove the item for sale," the school said in a statement. "We have and continue to educate our student-athletes that it is not permissible to accept any type of compensation for their autograph or the sale of memorabilia. We have spoken with Teddy Bridgewater and we are comfortable that no violation has occurred."

Clowney, Bridgewater and Miller enter the season has prime contenders for the Heisman.

Manziel became the first freshman to win it last season. It's unclear if an NCAA violation would cause the Heisman trust to reconsider Manziel's victory.

Heisman Trust's rules state: "The recipient must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA Student-Athlete."

"The Heisman Trust never comments on speculation," Heisman spokesman Tim Henning said Wednesday.

Reggie Bush's 2005 Heisman Trophy was later vacated after the NCAA found he had received improper benefits during his winning season.

___

AP sports writers Pete Iacobelli in Columbia, S.C., and Rusty Miller in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Caputo has long pondered the question - what holds as vast and diverse a country as America together.

In 2011, he set out with his wife and two dogs to cross the country in an old camper in search of the answer, about 17 years after the idea first came to him standing on a wind-whipped island off the Alaska coast.

The result of their 16,000-mile (25,750-km) journey is his latest book, "The Longest Road," which chronicles his travels from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, in his quest to understand America's identity.

Q: What first inspired you to venture on this trip and write this book?

A: Seventeen years ago, while I was in Alaska on a small island, I saw small Eskimo children pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States. Six months before I had been in Key West, Florida, and I saw the children of Cuban immigrants doing the same thing. I thought how remarkable it was ... children from two extremely different cultures were citizens of the same country. Somehow that vast, diverse nation with every nationality you can think of, somehow it has held together for 200 years.

Q: What was the fundamental question you were asking?

A: At the time there were a lot of political and cultural and economic problems in the United States that seemed to be tearing at our social fabric, and I was wondering - 'Is the U.S. holding together as well as it once did?' I resolved that I would interview as many people along the way - what is the glue that holds the U.S. together?

Q: And what answers did you find?

A: To tell you the truth, the views vary as much as the individuals. A lot of people just said it's a tolerance in the United States for a heterogeneous society, even though we have exhibited gross intolerance in the past and probably still do. Nevertheless, if I could sum it up in a word, it's the idea that we're better off hanging together than we are hanging separately.

Down in Texas I met this young woman and I asked her that question and she said: "It's hope. Isn't that what it has always been?" It occurred to me that the hope for a better life, if not for you, for your children, is what has drawn people to this country for 200 years, and it's still that hope that I think binds the country together.

Q: Was there something unexpected you found on your trip, something that surprised you?

A: I can't say it shocked me, but I was distressed when I got in the middle of the country, in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, what we call the heartland, to see how depressed it is in many ways.

I grew up in the Midwest and I remember these farm towns I remember in my boyhood in the 1950s. They were vibrant, lively towns, and they're all dying. Almost every single one of them is dying. We came to a town called Lebanon, Kansas, which is at the geographical center of the continental United states. The town looked like some very bad depressed neighborhood in big cities like Detroit or the Bronx in New York.

Q: Now that the trip is over, do you miss life on the road?

A: Oh yeah, very much. As a matter of fact, after my wife and I got settled back into our house ... we missed the road, especially traveling the way we did in this antique trailer. It's a little like taking a voyage on a sailboat. It becomes a much more Spartan kind of life. We missed the simplicity of it, the absence of very distracting complications that come with ordinary life, from taking out the garbage to answering the telemarketer phone calls.

(Reporting by Dina Kyriakidou; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Vicki Allen)

While you addressed the writer's needs, and yes, he is entitled to his feelings, I think you should have taken this a step further.

Once you become a father, it is not all about "you" anymore. The 12-year-old boy is now, and forever will be, his son's half-brother. Unless this man wants to distance himself from his son and cause permanent damage to their relationship, he needs to get some therapy so he will be able to think of that boy in a different way and can deal with him in the future. He is not in a "good place" as he stated if seeing this boy causes such an emotional issue. The two boys seem to have a good relationship, and a future with his son will -- and should -- include the half-brother, even if the visits are short ones.

Someday that boy will be a grown man, and he will recognize the kindness shown to him. The boy is not responsible for his mother's behavior and the father needs to realize that. -- DEBORAH IN CHANDLER, ARIZ.

DEAR DEBORAH: You are right. It would have been better for all concerned if I had been harder on the father and more sensitive to the feelings of the boys involved, which many readers pointed out to me:

DEAR ABBY: I almost always agree with your answers, but your answer to that letter was off the mark. It's admirable that his son has such a close relationship with his half-brother, and not allowing the boys to do something they enjoy together for a weekend is wrong. That the writer admits he still has problems with the past is his problem, not the kids'.

Since he admits it brings up feelings he thought he had put behind him, he should get professional help to finally deal with those unresolved issues. Also, if he doesn't want the 12-year-old in his house for one weekend of fun, then he should take his wife away for a romantic weekend and let the boys use the beach house in his absence. It's all about compromise, not the ultimatum. -- BEEN THERE, DONE THAT IN KANSAS

DEAR ABBY: Tell that man to get a psychotherapist! The child isn't responsible for his mother's behavior. The man needs to expand his heart. When he's an old man he will never regret hosting the boy, but he would regret having hurt a child and perhaps alienating his own son in the process. You called that one wrong, Abby! -- LESLIE R., CHAMPAIGN, ILL.

DEAR ABBY: I agree with your advice more often than not, although I suspect we are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. That father needs to grow up and put the feelings of his son and his son's half-brother before his own. It's time people learned once more what it means not to be selfish and think of their own feelings, but the feelings of others. Please reconsider your response. -- PAUL W., JOHNSON CITY, TENN.

DEAR PAUL: I have, and I regret my initial answer.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Good advice for everyone -- teens to seniors -- is in "The Anger in All of Us and How to Deal With It." To order, send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Anger Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

[More from BGR: ]

Interactive has just 35 employees, so the customer to employee ratio is none too shabby. Back then in 2009, [BBM] could have been the mobile messenger, if only they had gone cross-platform, says Kik founder TedLivingston in a Financial Post interview, twisting the knife inthat immaculately passive-aggressive Canadian manner.

[More from BGR: ]

Kik has recently become a top-10 social networking app in markets as diverse as the United States, U.K., Australia, Sweden and Egypt. It has also surged in markets where BBM used to dominate, such as Nigeria and United Arab Emirates.

One imagines there is politely hidden, yet torturoustension at , the classy Waterloojoint favored by BlackBerrys middle management and sometimes frequented by Kik engineers who get tiredof Crabby Joes Tap and Grill.

This article was

NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - The New Jersey Devils hockey team was expected to announce that Philadelphia 76ers owner Josh Harris has agreed to purchase a controlling interest in the franchise and its arena, pending league approval, media reports said.

The Devils announced late Wednesday that the team would hold a major news conference at 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday. Sources told Reuters there have been negotiations in recent weeks to sell the team.

The Record newspaper of New Jersey reported on its website that Harris would buy a majority stake in the team and the Prudential Center for $320 million, following a vote from the National Hockey League's Board of Governors.

ESPN also reported that the team will announce the sale on Thursday.

A spokesman for the Devils could not be reached on Wednesday night to comment. A spokesman for the National Basketball Association's 76ers said he could not comment on the matter.

Robert Sommer, spokesman for the Prudential Center arena where the Devils play, on Thursday declined to comment.

Harris, a billionaire managing director at Apollo Global management and David Blitzer, a senior managing director at Blackstone, led a group that acquired the NBA's 76ers in 2011 for about $280 million.

The Devils have played in the Newark-based Prudential Center since 2007, when they relocated from East Rutherford, New Jersey. The arena, championed by former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, has struggled to turn a profit due in part to a large number of competing sports and entertainment venues in the New York metropolitan area.

Forbes magazine reported that the Devils have accumulated $230 million in debt and that team owner Jeff Vanderbeek missed the first payment on a recently restructured bank loan.

Billboard magazine rated the arena as the eighth-highest grossing worldwide for the first half of 2013, however the venue, known as "The Rock," has struggled to generate enough revenue, particularly since the departure of the NBA's Nets to nearby Brooklyn.

(Additional reporting by Frank Pingue; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Catherine Evans and Maureen Bavdek)

Now, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs dubious announcement on Wednesday that he plans to bring Internet to the entirety of the developing world, we have a new term to add to the tech lexicon: vaporcare.

I believe connectivity is a human right, the Facebook founder declares in , and that if we can work together we can make it a reality. He goes on to outline, in what can only be described as a mind-bomb epiphany, a rough plan for making the Internet available to the next five billion (that is, the majority of the worlds population that presently lacks Web access),of a new entity calleddedicated to this cause.

This grand pronouncement has attracted significant attention, including an exclusive interview with CNN. But wading into the details of the plan, its less than clear whats actually being announced here, beyond a firm conviction in a general idea (Internet access!) that nobody really disagrees with. The plan pretty much entails carrying on with precisely the business strategies Facebook and its announced partners in this consortium will need to pursue to keep growing its customer base, but positioned as some sort of massive humanitarian undertaking.

In short, it sounds like vaporcare.

In a way, this seems in line with the current vogue for Big Unlikely-Sounding Idea projects like Elon Musks Hyperloop or Googles Project Loon. Wouldnt it be neat if there were a super-train for San Francisco to L.A. in half an hour, or a network of floating-balloon broadband transmitters? Sure! And now back to business. (Bill Gates, who knows a thing or two about the difference between business and humanitarian efforts, summed up the limits of such schemes recently: When youre dying of malaria, I suppose youll look up and see that balloon, and Im not sure how itll help you.)

At the moment, however, the Internet.org initiative lacks even a nutty conversation-starting focal point. Instead, partners Facebook, Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, and others (working together as an industry) pledge to try and make the relevant technology more affordable; improve data efficiency; and invent business model variations appropriate to the developing world.

You can judge this an effort to , but to me it just sounds like the profit motive. And of course there is no shame in that: The profit motive isnt inherently at odds with human rights or humanitarianism. In fact, the explicit case for pursuing developing-world business goals that happen to have positive humanitarian effects has been most convincingly made in the late s .

Perhaps Internet.org will develop into something more specific and significant over time; the partnership is apparently supposed to involve nonprofits and local communities, but at the moment it lists only tech firms. And even Zuckerbergs essay basically acknowledges that this is all a belated and dressed-up announcement of strategy his company has been pursuing for a while: Facebook has already invested more than $1 billion to connect people in the developing world over the past few years, he writes, and we plan to do more. Asreported mere weeks ago, Facebook has worked diligently for a couple of years on a lightweight version of its service aimed explicitly at the developing world. In a lot of foreign markets, people think that the Internet is Facebook, one observer told The Times.

That comment actually sounds pretty depressing, and slightly ominous. And maybe this is what explains the repositioning of a sound business strategy as humanitarian-sounding vaporcare: Instead of talking about what it would mean if the next five billion experience the Internet primarily via Facebook, we can talk about connectivity as a human right. And thus a business strategy is converted from something that might seem worrisome into something that everyone can like.

U.S. authorities earlier this year accused Deniss Calovskis, along with suspects from Russia and Romania, of participating in a conspiracy that started in 2005 to create and disseminate the so-called Gozi virus. Once the virus was embedded on victims' computers it siphoned off passwords and bank account information.

Latvian ministers, by a vote of 7 to 5, with one abstaining, approved the extradition of Calovskis, who was born in 1985.

Martins Panke, spokesman for Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, said the country's chief prosecutor told ministers before the vote that there was sufficient evidence to link Calovskis to the crimes.

Many Latvians were vehemently opposed to the idea of extraditing Calovskis since he faces 67 years in prison if found guilty by a U.S. court, which they feel is excessive.

The government decision is final, but Calovskis' lawyer, Saulvedis Varpins, has told Latvian media that he will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the extradition.

It was unclear when the extradition could take place, but a Justice Ministry spokeswoman told The Associated Press that it would take at least several days.

According to documentation released by U.S. authorities in January, Romanian citizen Mihai Ionut Paunescu set up online infrastructure that allowed others to distribute the damaging programs, causing tens of millions of dollars in losses and affecting well over a million computers.

Some 200 computers of the U.S. space agency NASA were affected by the virus between December 2007 and August 2012, the documents revealed.

Paunescu was arrested in Romania in January, but the third accused co-conspirator, Nikita Kuzmin, a Russian national, was arrested in New York on various charges, including bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.

The 23-year-old British tourist whose foot waswhen a New York City taxi swerved onto a curb will now require further amputation of her leg, her father said in a statement today from his home in Leicester, England.

Sian Green and her best friend Keisha Warren were sitting on the ledge of a fountain eating hot dogs at Rockefeller Plaza Tuesday when a 24-year-old taxi driver hit the curb, causing Green to fly up in the air and land with her left foot severed and the other injured. A plumber who witnessed the accident rushed to her aid, followed by famous TV personality Dr. Oz, who tended to Green until emergency rescuers whisked her to the Bellevue Medical Center for surgery.

A distraught Warren, unharmed by the taxi, stayed behind, unable to join her close friend in the ambulance.

Green's father, Jason Green, said the family was planning to fly to New York to be with Sian, according to the U.K.'s . Green's boyfriend, who she recently moved in with, is also arranging a cross-Atlantic trip to the Big Apple.

"Her friend Keshia is still in shock. We are a really close family we are all devastated by what has happened. We don't know what to say. We just want to be at our daughter's side right now," Jason Green said.

The two best friends, who sport matching "les amis" tattoos on their arms, had been anticipating their trip to New York for months. On July 14, Green uploaded a photo on Instagram showing a clock with a New York City backdrop counting down the days to her arrival. Beneath the photo was the note "New York plzzzzz hurry up! #newyork #excited #August #lovinglife, according to the .

According to Green's Facebook page, she had her sights on a career in fashion and had been working as a fashion-buyer trainee at Hugo Boss while attending De Montfort University in England.

The taxi driver, meanwhile, received a summons for being the unauthorized driver of the vehicle but so far faces no additional charges, police said. Reports show that he'd had seven traffic violations in the past three years.

Police say Green is now in stable condition.

ABC News reached out to Bellevue hospital and the Green family for comment, but neither responded.