Instagram abuzz over Malia Obama

An unauthorized photo of President Barack Obama's 16-year-old daughter, Malia, is drawing attention on the Internet. The photo appears on the Instagram page for Pro Era, a hip-hop music collective based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Malia sports a white T-shirt with the group's red and green logo across the front. The White House disapproves of photos being published or posted of Malia and her 13-year-old sister, Sasha, when they are not with Obama and-or first lady Michelle Obama, or other unauthorized use of their names or images. The White House declined comment Tuesday, an apparent sign of its unhappiness over the photo's distribution. Bradley Bledsoe, a spokesman for Pro Era, said by email that "the group received the photo from a mutual friend of Pro Era and Malia, and the photo is real."

SpaceX may try again on Friday

SpaceX called off a supply flight to the International Space Station on Tuesday because of rocket trouble. The countdown was halted just over a minute before launch at Cape Canaveral when a steering mechanism in the rocket malfunctioned. The soonest SpaceX can try again to launch the unmanned Falcon rocket is Friday morning, provided it can quickly fix the problem. In addition, SpaceX plans to try an experimental, daring maneuver to land the first stage of the rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic. The company hopes that the step will lead to reusable rockets, which would greatly cut the cost of space travel.

Side of yuca with your burger?

Venezuela's more than 100 McDonald's franchises have run out of potatoes and are serving alternatives like deep-fried arepa flatbreads or yuca, a starchy staple of traditional South American cooking. McDonald's is blaming a contract dispute with U.S. West Coast dock workers for halting the export of frozen fries. The dispute also caused several days of french fry rationing in Japan last month. But Sonia Ruseler, an Argentina-based spokeswoman for Arcos Dorados, which runs McDonald's restaurants in Latin America, declined to say why Venezuela's neighbors are not suffering from similar scarcity.