---

Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.
The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

---

---

Military bases across the U.S. have banned the sale of a new video game that lets a player pretend to be a Taliban fighter and "shoot" U.S. troops.
"Medal of Honor" by Electronic Arts, a major game developer based in Redwood City, Ca., hits stores Oct. 12.
But after public protests, including one by British Defense Secretary Liam Fox, U.S. military officials decided not to stock the game in any of the nearly 300 service exchange shops on bases across the country.

---

---

A group of Australian high school students underwent tests for possible blood-borne viruses, including HIV, after a teacher took blood tests from class members using the same needle, The Mercury reported Wednesday.

Eighteen students in southern Tasmania were trying to test the PH levels of their blood during a class experiment on Aug. 9.

---

---

-A U.S. Marine used eBay to illegally sell dozens of high-tech munitions--some of which he claimed to have found discarded near a dumpster at Camp Pendleton in California--to foreign buyers, transactions that federal investigators allege violated arms export laws covering such “sensitive and classified technologies,” The Smoking Gun has learned.

After a two-year investigation, a federal grand jury has been impaneled to review the activities of Douglas Rubsam, 32, who is suspected of stealing military property worth more than $100,000 and selling it via the online auction site, according to court records.

---

---

- Unhappy meals have arrived at a McDonald's in San Francisco.

Homeless people who hang out at the nearby Golden Gate Park used to get 99-cent burgers at the McDonald's located at Haight and Stanyan streets in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

But the eatery got rid of its Dollar Menu about a month ago. That move, which McDonald's called a simple business decision, means items on the menu are now too expensive for the people who spend much of their day hanging out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

Items on the Dollar Menu now cost around $1.50.

"I eat less. I have to get more money," said 29-year-old Nicholas Newhart to The San Francisco Chronicle . He was not happy with the price increase and said, "If I don't have a dollar and I want food, I just end up going to a trash can."

---

---

He was arrested for protecting his property and family.

But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line.

He got an AK-47 assault rifle, pulled the trigger and he ended up in jail, reports CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman.

George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home.

“I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said.

Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house.

“He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said.

---

---

Tests performed earlier this month by an environmental scientist found significant levels of oil pollution from the BP disaster in oysters and crabs collected along the Gulf of Mexico's Louisiana coastline

---

---

---

---

Craigslist appears to have surrendered in a legal fight over erotic ads posted on its website, shutting down its adult services section Saturday and replacing it with a black bar that simply says "censored."

The move comes just over a week after a group of state attorneys general said there weren't enough protections against blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution. It's not clear if the closure is permanent, and it appears to only affect ads in the United States.

The listings came under new scrutiny after the jailhouse suicide last month of a former medical student who was awaiting trial in the killing of a masseuse he met through Craigslist, a popular site that lets users post classified ads, often for free.

Craigslist's adult services section carried ads for everything from personal massages to a night's companionship, which critics say veered into prostitution.

---

---

An offshore oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, west of the site of the April blast that caused the massive oil spill.
A commercial helicopter company reported the blast around 9:30 a.m. CDT Thursday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel said. Seven helicopters, two airplanes and four boats were en route to the site, about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay along the central Louisiana coast.
The Coast Guard said initial reports indicated all 13 crew members from the rig were in the water. One was injured, but there were no deaths.
The platform owned by Mariner Energy is in about 2,500 feet of water, the Coast Guard said, and was not currently producing.

---