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Flashback 8/7/2011: David Gregory: "Are U.S. treasury bonds still safe to invest in?" Alan Greenspan: "Very much so. This is not an issue of credit rating..the United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that, so there is zero probability of default."

City ordered to cut power after dispatcher at Northern California Power Agency misunderstood directive from grid operatorWhen the city of Palo Alto shut off power to about 1,700 customers in the Midtown, Old Palo Alto and Industrial Park neighborhoods on Tuesday afternoon, utilities officials believed they were following an urgent order to conserve power from a state agency that oversees independent utility operators. Now, however, it appears that the power outage was premature, unnecessary and based on a dispatcher's misunderstanding. The outage, which came in the midst of a sweltering heat wave, hit Palo Alto customers at about 6:30 p.m....

NBC Bay Area's Stephanie Chuang shows why some are alarmed after a picture of the San Francisco International Airport was included in a publication run by Al Qaeda. A stock photo of San Francisco International Airport featured in an international publication – reportedly run by al Qaeda - is sounding off alarms on Capitol Hill, especially as the year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings nears. At a Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said he was first alerted by a top law enforcement official in the Bay area to the picture of what appears to be...

Casey James Fury simply didn't want to be at work, and in the process cost the Navy nearly a half-billion dollars and one attack submarine. Fury admitted to setting fire to the USS Miami, a nuclear sub, in May 2012 while it was in dry dock. Fury also admitted to starting a second fire at the dry dock three weeks later, according to federal court documents. In both cases, he told investigators that he started the fires because he was having extreme anxiety and was trying to get out of work, according to federal documents. On Tuesday, the Navy announced...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE RAMROD, Afghanistan -- NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: recognizing troops for "courageous restraint" if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives. The concept comes as the coalition continues to struggle with the problem of civilian casualties despite repeated warnings from the top NATO commander, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that the war effort hinges on the ability to protect the population and win support away from the Taliban. Those who back the idea hope it will provide troops with another incentive to think twice before calling in...

The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack. An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt. As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran...

A flurry of public concern in the City of Falls Church over reports published in the Washington Post last week that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA) may terminate the City’s “George” bus system appears unfounded. The fact is that Metro doesn’t fund “George” in the first place. The City does. “Including ‘George’ and other locally-funded bus routes in the WMATA report was flat out a mistake,” said F.C. Acting City Manager Wyatt Shields. He said that WMATA has acknowledged what was probably a clerical error by “someone way down in the organization,” Shields said, but he has not...

NEW YORK (AP) - Hoping to save hundreds of lives, health officials made a regulatory change Wednesday that will allow the city to track thousands of people with diabetes and occasionally prod them to take better care of themselves. In doing so, New York will become the first American city to monitor diabetes in the same way health departments now commonly track people with HIV or tuberculosis. It will also be treading new ground, and potentially raising some privacy concerns, by collecting information about people who have a chronic disease that isn't contagious or caused by an environmental toxin. The...

By DEAN SCHABNER July 27, 2005 -- For Sonya Dias, when the choice came down to leaving the city she loved and the Victorian home she had painstakingly restored or giving up her dog, there was no contest. Her house is on the market and her bags are packed, because Denver says she cannot keep her beloved pet, a pit bull named Gryffindor. After several high-profile pit bull attacks, the city enacted a law banning the breed, but Dias insists concern about her pet is unwarranted.

The era of easy travel for U.S. citizens returning from Latin America and the Caribbean is over. Within months they will have to present passports -- instead of driver's licenses or birth certificates -- if they want to clear passport control. By year's end, the U.S. government will require Americans returning by air or sea from the Caribbean and Central and South America to carry U.S. passports -- a major change in travel procedures for citizens who for decades have been readmitted by merely flashing a driver's license or a birth certificate. It's the first in a series of phased-in...