Hasta La Gadget!

When Sol and Christine Moghadam went to Ghana to adopt two boys and two girls, the couple was taken at gunpoint and put behind bars. They were accused of child trafficking, the couple recounted to CBS Friday in the video above.

The pair, from Irvine, Calif., had already adopted two boys, Ethan and Isaac, and were celebrating a Ghananian judge’s approval of adopting Stephen, Derrick, Phillis and Illeana — four siblings who were about to be put in an orphanage.

Moments before the Moghadams were going to go to lunch to celebrate, police arrested them and said they had forged the judge’s approval. They had to watch as the children were ripped out of their arms and taken to an unknown place.

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Steve Ettlinger, author of Twinkie, Deconstructed, a book on the ingredients found in processed foods, received 13 interview requests by Friday afternoon to comment on the bankruptcy of junk-food maker Hostess Brands.

Ettlinger, a writer living in New York City, first realized how worked up people got about Twinkies after his book came out in 2007. “The popularity of Twinkies was something I discovered,” he said. “Now people call me the Twinkie man.”

“There’s something peculiar about them because they’re so small and blond,” Ettlinger said. “People feel really strongly about it.”

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The warranty-voiders over at iFixit decided to spend their Friday evening tearing into a freshly delivered Nexus 4 and have given us a peek inside Google’s smartphone darling. After removing a pair of screws and spending a few minutes prying off the rear cover, the teardown specialists found that the backplate’s sparkling exterior isn’t the only thing that makes it special. In addition to serving a cosmetic purpose, the hind side plate packs a handful of pressure contacts that power the handset’s NFC antenna and connect its wireless charging induction coil. Extracting the battery required evicting additional screws and a fair amount of elbow grease to wrangle the 2100 mAh pack free from adhesive. As for the motherboard, its removal was a relatively easy process comprised of freeing it from a couple of connectors. The outfit’s final verdict on the device’s repairability isn’t in just yet, but you can tap the source link below to gaze at the LG-made phone’s innards.

Update: iFixit has given Mountain View’s smartphone a 7 out of 10 score in terms of repairability. The three point mark-down stems from a tricky battery removal experience and the glass front, which is fused to the display and its frame. Also, despite the lack of LTE support, a close look at the motherboard reveals a Qualcomm WTR1605L seven-band 4G LTE chip.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

iFixit pries open Google’s Nexus 4, exposes somewhat stubborn battery (update: repairability verdict, LTE chip) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scandal-scarred Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R) didn’t get a lot of help from his party after revelations emerged about the physician lawmaker’s past affair with a patient, who he also urged to get an abortion.

But federal election records show that more than $30,000 did come rushing in at the last moment. That help included a donation from one very prominent member of the party that rushed to DesJarlais’ aid just as Democrats were trying to unseal court records detailing DesJarlais’ multiple affairs in his 2000 breakup with his then-wife.

That donor was National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who donated $2,000 to his embattled colleague. An NRCC spokesman did not immediately answer an email request for comment.

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John Dale Harvey (aka “Tobi Marsh”) was a drag performer whose recollections document the hardships and sacrifices that entertainers in the field of female impersonation/drag faced during the pre-Stonewall era. Sadly, Tobi passed away Nov. 15.
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