Dead Lotto Winner's Wife Seeks 'Truth'

The wife of a $1 million Chicago lottery winner who died of cyanide poisoning told ABC News that she was shocked to learn the true cause of his death and is cooperating with an ongoing homicide investigation.

"I want the truth to come out in the investigation, the sooner the better," said Shabana Ansari, 32, the wife of Urooj Khan, 46. "Who could be that person who hurt him?

"It has been incredibly hard time," she added. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone."

Ansari, Khan's second wife, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she prepared what would be her husband's last meal the night before Khan died unexpectedly on July 20. It was a traditional beef-curry dinner attended by the married couple and their family, including Khan's 17-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, Jasmeen, and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the paper, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She called 911.

Khan, an immigrant from India who owned three dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June and said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.

"Him winning the lottery was just his luck," Ansari told ABC News. "He had already worked hard to be a millionaire before it."

Illinois Lottery/AP Photo

Chicago Lottery Winner Died From Cyanide Poisoning Watch Video

Lottery Murder Suspect Dee Dee Moore Found Guilty Watch Video

Lottery Winner Murder Trial: Opening Statements Begin Watch Video

Jimmy Goreel, who worked at the 7-Eleven store where Khan bought the winning ticket, described him to The Associated Press as a "regular customer ... very friendly, good sense of humor, working type of guy."

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Khan's unexpected death the month after his lottery win raised the suspicions of the Cook County medical examiner. There were no signs of foul play or trauma so the death initially was attributed to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which covers heart attacks, stroke or ruptured aneurysms. The medical examiner based the conclusion on an external exam -- not an autopsy -- and toxicology reports that indicated no presence of drugs or carbon monoxide.

Khan was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

However, several days after a death certificate was issued, a family member requested that the medical examiner's office look further into Khan's death, Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina said. The office did so by retesting fluid samples that had been taken from Khan's body, including tests for cyanide and strychnine.

When the final toxicology results came back in late November, they showed a lethal level of cyanide, which led to the homicide investigation, Cina said. His office planned to exhume Khan's body within the next two weeks as part of the investigation.

Melissa Stratton, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, confirmed it has been working closely with the medical examiner's office. The police have not said whether or not they believe Khan's lottery winnings played a part in the homicide.

Khan had elected to receive the lump sum payout of $425,000, but had not yet received it when he died, Ansari told the AP, adding that the winnings now are tied up as a probate matter.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Authorities also have not revealed the identity of the relative who suggested the deeper look into Khan's death. Ansari said it was not her, though she told the AP she has subsequently spoken with investigators.

"This is been a shock for me," she told ABC News. "This has been an utter shock for me, and my husband was such a goodhearted person who would do anything for anyone. Who would do something like this to him?

"We were married 12 years [and] he treated me like a princess," she said. "He showered his love on me and now it's gone."

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Tony Fadell: From iPhones to sexing up thermostats

After quitting Apple, the tech guru behind the iPod wanted to revolutionise our homes – starting with the humble thermostat

After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?
Not at all! The plan was to retire with my wife, who also worked for Steve [Jobs], and spend time with our children. We didn't see them because we were working so madly at Apple. We wanted to build a house in Lake Tahoe. I wanted to design the greenest, most connected house that I could. That's when I found out about the thermostat problem. These devices had not seen innovation in 30 years. They were the same as the ones our parents had. I wanted something that was very different.

Your solution was the NEST. Tell me about it
It uses algorithms and sensors to remember the temperatures you like, create a custom schedule for your home and turn itself down when you are away. And you can use your smartphone, tablet or computer to control it remotely. We call it the thermostat for the iPhone generation. It has a big dial, not fiddly buttons.

Did Steve Jobs have any input?
I was going to talk to Steve about it. He knew we were working on something, but he didn't know what. When it was time to show him, he said he couldn't do it. Unfortunately, he died just a few weeks later, before he could see it.

Is the NEST just the start of a range of smart-home devices?
Absolutely. But if you look at what we did at Apple after the iPod came out, it took us five years to start thinking about the iPhone and two more years to finally ship it. I would love to make more devices, but our goal is to make the NEST successful first.

Who would have believed the iPod could turn into the iPhone, then the iPad?
Even I wondered how many people would buy an iPad. But you have to be at the right place in the cultural time. We plan a similar trajectory with the NEST, with the ways that emerging behaviours can happen in the home through interconnected devices. You can't start with all of these things at once because people's minds get blown. You start with very simple things, simple concepts, and then you can build on them.

Will people have to continually upgrade their thermostats, as they do with cellphones?
Unlike a cellphone, you're not going to change the NEST every 18 months! They are supposed to hang on your wall for 10 to 15 years. Our goal is to continue to improve it via software, and we have built tonnes of extra capability into this device to allow that to happen. For example, we have a new update that gives an energy report - it shows how you're doing compared with last month, and even compares you to your neighbours.

Was it your aim to raise awareness of the energy we waste heating our homes?
The NEST starts people thinking about how they're using energy in the home. But it's also a great party trick. You get people whipping out their phones and saying "Check out my NEST at home! Watch, I'm going to freeze my wife!"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Police fire plastic bullets in Northern Ireland riots

BELFAST, United Kingdom: Police in Northern Ireland fired plastic bullets and water cannon at protesters in the capital Belfast late Monday after coming under a hail of petrol bombs, bricks and stones for a fifth night.

Rioters in the east of the city used weapons including hatchets and sledge hammers to attack police and their vehicles, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said.

Pro-British protesters have taken to the streets of Belfast almost every night since December 3, when the city council announced that it would no longer fly the British flag all year round at the City Hall.

The decision sparked riots at the start of December which gave way to largely peaceful protests, but the violence has flared again since the start of the new year.

Britain's Northern Ireland minister Theresa Villiers said the province was being "held to ransom" by the protesters and called for an end to their demonstrations, including peaceful rallies that have blocked traffic for weeks.

"It's not acceptable that those who say they are defending a Union flag are actually doing it by hurling bricks and petrol bombs at police. It's disgraceful, frankly," she told BBC radio.

She added that the protests were doing "huge damage to Northern Ireland's image abroad".

The flag ruling has raised tensions in the British province between loyalists - who want to maintain the links to Britain and are mostly Protestant - and largely Catholic republicans who want a united Ireland.

Northern Ireland's chief police officer Matt Baggott on Monday accused the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, which murdered more than 500 people during the province's 30-year sectarian conflict, of whipping up the disorder.

"Senior members of the UVF in east Belfast as individuals have been increasingly orchestrating some of this violence," he told a press conference.

"That is utterly unacceptable and is being done for their own selfish motives."

On Monday, police battled to separate a crowd of around 250 loyalists from some 70 Catholic republicans, who hurled missiles including bottles at the protesters.

Around 1,000 loyalists had earlier staged a peaceful demonstration outside the City Hall as councillors held their first meeting since their decision to take the flag down.

More than 60 police officers have been injured and over 100 people arrested since the disorder began at the start of December.

The PSNI said four people had been charged in connection with Monday night's disorder and were due to appear in court on Tuesday.

Politicians from both sides have received death threats in recent weeks, but lawmakers from all major parties have insisted that the spate of violence does not pose a serious threat to Northern Ireland's peace process.

Some 3,000 people were killed in the three decades of sectarian bombings and shootings in Northern Ireland known as "The Troubles".

A 1988 peace agreement brought an end to most of the violence and led to the creation of a power-sharing government between Protestants and Catholics, but sporadic bomb threats and murders by dissident republicans continue.

Loyalists see the council's decision to remove the flag for most of the year as an attack on their British identity and an unacceptable concession to republicans.

The flag will only be flown on a maximum of 17 designated days including the birthdays of members of the British royal family -- the first of which falls on Wednesday with the birthday of Prince William's wife Catherine.

Across the border in the Republic of Ireland, police are assessing the risk posed by a planned loyalist protest against the flag ruling in Dublin on Saturday.

The last major loyalist demonstration in the Irish capital sparked rioting and looting in 2006.

- AFP/de

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Primitive and Peculiar Mammal May Be Hiding Out in Australia

It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.

Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.

The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.

(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)

Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.

(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)

“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”

John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.

With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).

As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.

Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.

No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.

As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.

This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”

Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.

Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”

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Giffords, Kelly Launch Initiative to Curb Gun Violence

After she was gravely wounded by gunfire two years ago in Tucson, Ariz., former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, imagined a life out of the public eye, where she would continue therapy surrounded by the friends, family and the Arizona desert she loves so much.

Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly Speak Exclusively to Diane Sawyer

But after the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month, Giffords and Kelly knew they couldn't stay silent.

"Enough," Giffords said.

The couple marked the second anniversary of the Tucson shooting by sitting down with Diane Sawyer to discuss their recent visit to Newtown and their new initiative to curb gun violence, "Americans for Responsible Solutions."

"After the shooting in Tucson, there was talk about addressing some of these issues, [and] again after [a movie theater massacre in] Aurora," Colo., Kelly said. "I'm hopeful that this time is different, and I think it is. Twenty first-graders' being murdered in their classrooms is a very personal thing for everybody."

Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly Speak Exclusively to Diane Sawyer Watch Video

Gabrielle Giffords: Pledge of Allegiance at DNC Watch Video

Gabby and Mark Bonded by Dedication and Love Watch Video

Full Coverage: Gabrielle Giffords

During their trip to Newtown, Giffords and Kelly met with families directly affected by the tragedy.

"[The] first couple that we spoke to, the dad took out his cell phone and showed us a picture of his daughter and I just about lost it, just by looking at the picture," Kelly said. "It was just very tough and it brought back a lot of memories about what that was like for us some two years ago."

Full Coverage: Tragedy in Newtown

"Strength," Giffords said she told the families in Newtown.

"Gabby often told them, 'You got to have strength. You got to fight for something,'" Kelly said.

The innocent faces of the children whose lives were abruptly taken reminded the couple, they said, of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, the youngest victim to die in the Tucson shooting at a Giffords constituent event.

"I think we all need to try to do something about [gun violence]," Kelly said. "It's obvious to everybody we have a problem. And problems can be solved."

Giffords, Kelly Call for 'Common Sense' Solutions

Giffords, 42, and Kelly, 48, are both gun owners and supporters of the 2nd Amendment, but Kelly had strong words for the National Rifle Association after the group suggested the only way to stop gun violence is to have a "good guy with a gun."

There was a good guy with a gun, Kelly said, the day Jared Loughner shot Giffords and 18 other people, six fatally, at her "Congress on Your Corner" event.

"[A man came out] of the store next door and nearly shot the man who took down Jared Loughner," Kelly said. "The one who eventually wrestled [Loughner] to the ground was almost killed himself by a good guy with a gun, so I don't really buy that argument."

Instead, Giffords and Kelly are proposing "common sense" changes through "Americans for Responsible Solutions."

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Chad's 'mountains of hunger' as rendered by Turner

Joanna Carver, reporter

(Image: ESA/Envisat)

IT LOOKS like brushstrokes - it could almost be a Turner - but this is actually nature at its most dramatic. This snapshot from the European Space Agency's MERIS satellite shows the Tibesti mountains that straddle northern Chad and southern Libya - though a picture like this makes it easy to forget that borders exist.

The mountains, in blue and black at the centre, are a range of volcanoes. The grey and black peak in the bottom right is Emi Koussi, the tallest mountain in Chad at 3415 metres high. There aren't any recorded instances of any of the Tibesti volcanoes erupting, though Toussid‚, the black spot on the far left, does have a reputation for spewing gases and creating hot springs in its crater floor. The white regions are accumulations of carbonate salts, while the orange is desert.

For all their beauty from overhead, plant life is sparse on these mountains, known locally as the "Mountains of Hunger" because they feed so few people. The semi-nomadic Toubou people inhabit the region as salt miners and date and grain farmers, while some cheetahs, gazelles and sheep do roam the region.

Life expectancy in Chad is the lowest in the world at 48 years. An estimated 210,000 people are living with HIV and AIDS - 3.4 per cent of the population - while malaria, typhoid fever and hepatitis A are all major health problems. Thirty-four per cent of under-5s are underweight, and it has the worst maternal mortality rate of any nation. It's also home to 280,000 refugees from the Darfur conflict across the border in Sudan.

Rebellions frequently flare up in Chad, the most recent resulting in a four-year civil war that ended in 2010. Violent conflicts with Libya and Sudan have also plagued an already crippled country. Only from orbit do the borders not seem to matter.

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Football: Italy vows action on racism after Boateng's walkoff

MILAN: Italy's Interior Minister Annamaria Cancellieri on Monday called for "more incisive" action to be taken to end the abuse of non-white players by racist fans.

Cancellieri was speaking after AC Milan's Kevin-Prince Boateng last week responded to racist chants by a small group of fans during a friendly against fourth division side Pro Patria by storming off the pitch.

He was followed by his team-mates, prompting a global outpouring of applause for the German-born Ghanaian international's stance against racist supporters.

Sepp Blatter, the president of world football's governing body FIFA, hit out at Boateng's decision to force the suspension of last week's friendly, setting him at odds with AC Milan owner-president, Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Both FIFA and UEFA have previously warned against players walking off the pitch in protest, and Blatter said: "Walk off? No. I don't think that is the solution."

Cancellieri said Boateng's stance was a "nice gesture" but told Radio 24 Monday that a "more comprehensive strategy" needed to be put in place to avoid games being decided by "a minority of racists".

"This episode drew attention to a phenomenon which is unfortunately widespread and, as such, we have to be more serious about dealing with it," Cancellieri said.

At Rome's Olympic Stadium on Saturday some sections of Lazio's crowd were heard making monkey noises at Cagliari's Colombian striker Victor Ibarbo. The majority of the home crowd jeered and whistled to drown out the racists.

The regulations regarding the suspension of matches in such circumstances remain unclear and is a potential minefield for the football authorities, who would either have to replay matches or award victory to the team being victimised.

Cancellieri suggested that if "only a small group of fans" were involved in racist chanting games "should not be suspended".

"Fans involved in racist chanting should be hit very hard and must be removed from the stadium," she said. "If, however, the phenomenon is more widespread the game must be suspended by whoever is responsible for keeping public order."

There have been suggestions that police officials, who already attend football games in Italy's Serie A, could play a bigger role in deciding whether football games are suspended or not due to racist chanting.

Cancellieri said a meeting would be held between Italy's chief of police and the president of Serie A later this week to discuss ways to eliminate abusive fans from matches without necessarily forcing stoppages.

Berlusconi, meanwhile, said he disagreed with Blatter's appraisal of Boateng's gesture after vowing last week that his players would do the same again in a similar situation and calling the scenes at Pro Patria "disgraceful".

"I am of the opposite opinion. I congratulated the players for their courage in standing up to this abhorrent incident," he told Tgcom24, which is part of his Mediaset group.

"Football reflects society and should be something positive, teams should shown an example to the rest of society. What happened in the stadium should not be dismissed, it has done a lot of damage including to the reputation of Italy."

- AFP/de

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Enter the Hidden #Hashtag Sweeps

Hidden #Hashtag Sweeps

We decided to make this year's CES even more interesting. We've partnered with our friends at Sprint to bring the CNET audience a chance to win big in the Hidden #Hashtag Sweeps.

In the From the Floor series I'll be bringing an exclusive pass to the
CES 2013 show floor for all of you who can't be there. We'll show you the big screens and the bright lights that you'll find only at CES. Plus, we'll get you a first look at products, and throw you right into the center of the action at CES 2013. Watch the From the Floor videos all week and try to uncover each of the four hashtags I've hidden. 

Trust me -- I didn't make it easy, so watch closely. There will be only one hashtag hidden in each of four From the Floor videos. Make sure to check back every day this week as we publish more and more From the Floor.  There are so many exciting things to cover on the show floor at 2013 CES, so you are going to have to sit back, relax, and get ready to hunt. Once you've found each one, tweet it @CNET for a chance to be win the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.10.1. 

Ready to start watching and enter? Now for the fine print about how:

• Register for Twitter. If you're not already registered, please do so. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again -- you just need to be logged in.


• Follow @CNET on Twitter. To follow @CNET, go to http://twitter.com/CNET and click on the button in the upper-left corner of the page that says "follow" CNET.


• Watch the From The Floor videos and look for the Hidden #Hashtags.


• When you find a Hidden #Hashtag, tweet it @CNET. There are four Hidden #Hashtags. If you find another hashtag, tweet it @CNET. Each unique hashtag you tweet @CNET will count as an additional entry into the Sweepstakes. There will be a total of four hidden hashtags.


• Limit one tweet per hidden hashtag, per person, for a maximum of four (4) entries per person for the duration of the Sweepstakes. Entries in excess of such tweet limits will be disqualified from the Sweepstakes.


• The winner will be chosen by random drawing of all eligible participants' entries.


• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.


• Entries can be submitted until Friday, January 11, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Some legalese:

* NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL
NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON.
MUST BE A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AT LEAST 18
OR AGE OF MAJORITY, WHICHEVER IS OLDER IN STATE OF RESIDENCE,
AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S.
TERRITORIES AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. SWEEPSTAKES ENDS 01/11/13. SEE RULES FOR DETAILS.

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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Winner: Places

  Photograph by Nenad Saljic

  A full moon illuminates the Matterhorn peak near Zermatt, Switzerland, in the winning image in the contest's Places category.

  Full moons occur every 29.5 days or so as the moon moves to the side of Earth directly opposite the sun, reflecting the sun's rays off its full face and appearing as a brilliant, perfectly circular disk.

  (Read more about full moons.)

  Published January 4, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Winner: People

  Photograph by Micah Albert

  A picture of women scavenging refuse from a landfill in Dandora, Kenya, is the winning image in the People category of the National Geographic Photo Contest.

  The Dandora landfill, located in eastern Nairobi, is one of the largest in Africa.

  Published January 4, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Photograph by Jason Ching

  Published January 4, 2013

  
  

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Hagel Nomination Stirs Bipartisan Opposition

Two weeks before his inauguration, and with more "fiscal cliffs" on the horizon, President Obama is embracing a showdown with Congress over his pick to lead the Pentagon in his second term.

Obama will nominate former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense at a formal White House announcement later today, administration officials said.

The president will name counterterrorism advisor John Brennan as the new CIA director to replace David Petraeus, rounding out an overhaul of his national security team.

Obama tapped Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts last month to become the next Secretary of State.

Hagel is in many ways an ideal pick for Obama, giving nod to bipartisanship while appointing someone with a demonstrated commitment to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and to retooling and economizing the Pentagon bureaucracy for the future.

But the nomination of Hagel to replace outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is also politically charged, expected to trigger a brutal confirmation fight in the Senate, where a bipartisan group of critics has already lined up against the pick.

"This is an in your face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told CNN on Sunday. "I don't know what his management experience is regarding the Pentagon -- little, if any, so I think it's an incredibly controversial choice."

The criticism stems from Hagel's controversial past statements on foreign policy, including a 2008 reference to Israel's U.S. supporters as "the Jewish lobby" and public encouragement of negotiations between the United States, Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian group the State Department classifies as terrorists.

"Hagel has consistently been against economic sanctions to try to change the behavior of the Islamist regime, the radical regime in Tehran, which is the only way to do it, short of war," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said last month.

The Nebraska Republican has also drawn fire for his outspoken opposition to the 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq and the subsequent troop "surge" ordered by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, which has been credited with helping bring the war to a close.

On the left, gay rights groups have protested Hagel for comments he made in 1998 disparaging then-President Bill Clinton's nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg James Hormel as "openly, aggressively gay." Hagel has since apologized for the remark as "insensitive."

Top Senate Democrats tell ABC News there is no guarantee Hagel will win confirmation and that, as of right now, there are enough Democratic Senators with serious concerns about Hagel to put him below 50 votes.

But that could change, with many top lawmakers publicly vowing to withhold final judgment until Hagel has an opportunity to answer his critics during confirmation hearings. No senator has yet publicly vowed to filibuster the Hagel nomination.

Hagel is a decorated Vietnam veteran and businessman who served in the senate from 1997 to 2009. After having sat on that chamber's Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, he has in recent years gathered praise from current and former diplomats for his work on Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board as well as the policy board of current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

"Chuck Hagel is a tremendous patriot and statesman, served incredibly in Vietnam, served this country as a United States senator. He hasn't had a chance to speak for himself. And so why all the prejudging?" said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., on "This Week."

"In America, you give everybody a chance to speak for themselves and then we'll decide," she said.

The top Senate Republican echoed that sentiment. "I'm going to wait and see how the hearings go and see whether Chuck's views square with the job he would be nominated to do," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

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