Programmers on health site stressed

Programmers on health site stressed

WASHINGTON

Crammed into conference rooms with pizza for dinner, some programmers building the Obama administration’s showcase health insurance website were growing increasingly stressed. Some worked past 10 p.m., energy drinks in hand. Others rewrote computer code over and over to meet what they considered last-minute requests for changes from the government or other contractors.

As questions mount over the website’s failure, insider interviews and a review of technical specifications by The Associated Press found a mind-numbingly complex system put together by harried programmers who pushed out a final product that congressional investigators said was tested by the government and not private developers with more expertise.

FBI gets tips about mystery child

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

The FBI is looking into whether a child found at a Gypsy camp in Greece is a missing Kansas City, Mo., girl, although the children’s ages don’t appear to match.

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said Tuesday that the 2-year-old disappearance of Lisa Irwin from her Kansas City home remains an open investigation and that agents follow up on all tips. Patton said the agency began receiving calls after the image of a girl found with a Gypsy couple appeared in media reports. A couple charged with abducting the girl has been put in custody, as an international search for the child’s biological parents intensifies.

A dental examination showed the mystery girl, known only as “Maria,” is older than previously thought, 5 or 6 years old instead of 4. Lisa Irwin would turn 3 in November.

Poll: 58% favor legalizing pot

Here is a short list of things that, according to Gallup, are less popular with Americans than the idea of legalizing pot:

Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court. The president.

In a sweeping cultural shift, comparable perhaps to Americans’ quickening support of same-sex marriage, a majority of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana use, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. The survey showed that 58 percent of 1,028 respondents supported legalization, with 39 percent against.

That’s a drop for the naysayers from just three years ago, when 50 percent of respondents opposed legalization — a number already riding a long plummet from a high of 73 percent in the 1990s.

Gallup credited much of the surge to political independents, whose support for legalization jumped from 50 percent to 62 percent in less than a year.

3 dead in crash of medical helicopter

Two hospital workers and a pilot were killed when a medical helicopter crashed in Tennessee as the aircraft was headed to pick up an ailing child, officials said Tuesday.

Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital President and CEO Meri Armour said the Hospital Wing helicopter was cleared for both weather and flight plans when it took off Tuesday morning headed to Bolivar.

“This was a very experienced pilot and a very experienced crew and a great helicopter, so we’re all anxious to know what happened,” Armour said.

When the helicopter didn’t respond during a routine 10-minute check-in about 6:20 a.m., authorities began searching by air and ground. They found the burning wreckage in a wooded area of Somerville, about 45 miles east of Memphis.

Combined dispatches