President Obama doubled downon driverless cars this week, declaring that the federal government, not the states, should oversee the development of self-driving cars, trucks and buses. The president and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that autonomous vehicles are too valuable for public safely and technological innovation to slow down with state-by-state regulations, or lengthy rule-making processes. And besides, self-driving technology is already on the road. Witness Tesla's semi-autonomous system, autopilot, which the carmaker added to its electric-powered sedans WHEN??? The system allows the vehicle to steer itself, change lanes, adjust speed and even find a parking space and parallel park.

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For California state officials, the new federal guidelines on testing and deployment of driverless cars come as a bit of a relief. Until this week, the absence of U.S. government guidance had left the state Department of Motor Vehicles -- generally in charge of registering vehicles and issuing drivers' licenses -- to take the lead role in drafting regulations to ensure the safety of self-driving vehicles. Though the federal guidelines issued Tuesday are short on specifics, the Department of Transportation will take responsibility for regulating the driving hardware and software, and it has devised a model state policy that probably will take the pressure off individual state agencies. That policy, issued jointly by the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, could result in changes to current California draft regulations on autonomous vehicles. "You can imagine how the California DMV would be struggling, with no technological background or engineers at their disposal, trying to figure out whether a particular autonomous vehicle is or is not safe enough to be deployed," said Robert Peterson, a law professor at Santa Clara University.

U.S. stocks inched higher Tuesday in another cautious day of trading as investors kept an eye on central banks in the U.S. and Japan. Healthcare and household goods companies led the way, while energy companies slipped. Major market indexes were higher all day but returned most of those gains at the close of trading. They rose just enough to cancel out Monday's small losses. Drug companies helped healthcare stocks make modest gains, while Exxon Mobil fell on reports that it's being investigated by securities regulators.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of planting a series of bombs in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, praised Anwar Awlaki in handwritten notes found on his person after he was wounded in a shootout Monday. FBI agents recovered a notebook from Rahami after he was wounded by police in Linden, N.J., a U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times. In the notebook, Rahami describes his affinity for Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who became a leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Awlaki was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011, but his legacy has spread among jihadists thanks to online audio and video sermons. The notebook also contained ramblings about the Boston Marathon bombers, the official said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation released long-awaited guidelines Tuesday for the testing and deployment of self-driving vehicles, giving manufacturers and researchers some clarity for the future, but providing only a vague sense of the federal government's exact responsibilities. At a Tuesday morning news conference, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx described the 116-page policy document as "the most comprehensive national automated vehicle policy that the world has ever seen." However, he added that the policy is a "living document" and leaves room for "more growth and changes in the future." "One of reasons we take great pains not to be so prescriptive" is because the technology is "dynamic" and changing fast, he said, so the government needs to be "flexible." In the document, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration emphasized that it did not intend to write the "final word on highly automated vehicles" with these guidelines.