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MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Chris Christie is fresh off his 50th day of campaigning in New Hampshire, a state where the New Jersey governor has recently won critical endorsements and his campaign is showing signs of life in the GOP race for president.

But Christie’s laser focus on the first primary state means he’s spent little time building a presence in South Carolina and beyond that could turn a potential victory in New Hampshire’s Feb. 9 primary into national momentum. In South Carolina, which holds its primary Feb. 20, Christie has no office open and a minimal grassroots network. He’s spent little time campaigning there or in other Southern states that will hold primaries soon after.

The question is whether that matters in a primary season that has been nationalized, particularly with the emergence of outsiders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Christie has taken advantage of that dynamic in recent weeks after the Paris attacks brought national security to the forefront, giving him the chance to employ his tough-talking persona and highlight his work as a federal prosecutor after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I’m just going to keep working as hard as I can here, try to do as well as I can here, and then let the future take care of itself,” Christie said Tuesday after an event in Manchester. “If my biggest worry is I’ve got to worry about staffing up after New Hampshire, man, I’ll tell you, that’s a problem I’ll take.”

Mike DuHaime, a senior adviser for Christie’s campaign, said that while Christie’s efforts may not be as visible as others, the campaign is working methodically behind the scenes to lay the groundwork in later voting states. Christie’s campaign has a consultant working in South Carolina, but campaign staffers won’t give the person’s name.

DuHaime said the campaign has already qualified to appear on the ballot in 15 states and expects to be on the ballot in 22 by the end of the month — efforts that often require collecting thousands of signatures. He said the team has dozens of volunteers on the ground in states including Illinois, Alaska, Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, Vermont and Tennessee.

Christie’s rivals aren’t waiting: Jeb Bush dispatched one of his Tallahassee-based consultants to South Carolina full-time and Marco Rubio has opened offices there. Ted Cruz tapped a local conservative party organizer to lead his ground campaign in the state, and he has the backing of Dan Tripp, who previously served as state director for Scott Walker’s now-defunct campaign.

Christie’s most high-profile advocate is Columbia attorney Leighton Lord, one of the governor’s college friends who has hosted Christie fundraisers.

Lord describes Christie as having a “light ground game” in South Carolina.

“It’s not a zero ground game,” he said. “And you can ramp up fast in South Carolina.”

Greenville-based GOP consultant Chip Felkel said it’s “definitely riskier” not to have a large organizational structure in place coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire. “But,” he added, “conventional wisdom has been out the door this entire campaign, so I’m not sure you can say it won’t work.”

And many in South Carolina, Felkel included, downplay the notion that Christie — or anyone else vying for the party’s more conventional, establishment branch — would have trouble building on a win or strong and performance in New Hampshire.

“This nominating process has already become a national contest in every way,” said South Carolina GOP Chairman Matt Moore. “So I don’t think it necessarily matters that candidates are putting their eggs in different baskets. If you win one of the early states, you are set up nicely to have momentum going forward.”

Christie is counting on it. Christie has visited New Hampshire more than any other candidate and hosted 36 town hall meetings. It’s beginning to pay dividends: The conservative editorial board of the Union Leader, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, endorsed Christie earlier this week. His campaign also recently announced support from Dan and Renee Plummer, well-known Republicans on New Hampshire’s Seacoast, and Donna Sytek, a former New Hampshire House speaker who had multiple candidates fighting for her support.

The campaign’s long-term view hinges on their belief that the calendar becomes more favorable to Christie as time goes on, with many large and winner-take-all or Northeastern states like Illinois, California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland and Pennsylvania, where they expect Christie to do well.

“If you can build something well, it’s more likely to last, and this has been a very carefully, methodically constructed campaign,” Wayne MacDonald, Christie’s New Hampshire chairman, said.

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AP reporter Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.

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Indoor cycling company Peloton received $75 million in growth capital investment from equity firm Catterton, according to a release, making the brand an able competitor in the indoor cycling sector.

“We are thrilled to partner with Catterton and build on the passion consumers have expressed for Peloton’s incredibly immersive fitness experience and unique digital content,” John Foley, Founder and CEO of Peloton, said in the release.  “Catterton’s outstanding track record of helping leading retail and consumer companies achieve their goals, as well as their deep understanding of the secular shifts taking place in the fitness space makes them an ideal partner for Peloton.  Catterton’s investment marks an exciting milestone in our growth and development.”

Catterton has invested in the popular Pure Barre franchise, as well as CorePower Yoga.

But unlike SoulCycle, which filed for an IPO this summer, Peloton’s primary business is not its studios.

“[We’re] not trying to compete with SoulCycle or Flywheel in our studio business —  running studios is a different style business than we’re trying to build,” Foley said to Business Insider. The business, he said, is primarily that of a technology company. 

“We see our self more akin to an Apple, a Tesla, or a Nest or a GoPro —  where it’s a consumer product that has a foundation of sexy hardware technology and sexy software technology.”

Peloton is unique in that it only has two studios — a flagship in Manhattan and a recently launched studio (in a partnership with Studio 3) in Chicago. These classes are streamed to Peloton’s customers who pay $39 a month for unlimited classes. Customers can choose from a variety of live classes and archived classes. The bike itself costs a hefty $1,995. (Some Business Insider employees have tried the bike, too.)

He’s also not trying to steal away SoulCycle’s target demographic, whom Foley described as on average 28 years old and predominantly female.

Peloton customers are much older — age 40-50, Foley said — and contain an equal split between men and women.

“When you’re 47 and you have kids, you quickly realize that your weekends and mornings become all about your kids,” Foley said. “Peloton bike owners have disproportionately said, ‘I can fit these things [working out] in.'”  

Peloton is expecting to expand. Foley anticipates that retail stores will double — there will be 24 units by the end of next year.

And an IPO might be on the horizon in the near future — but not for financial reasons.

“For this type of company, you know, a global consumer product like a Tesla or a GoPro, the IPO process can be a pretty fun and valuable part of getting the word out and kind of a marketing platform,” he said. “So while he don’t need the money — we’re profitable, and now we have well over $75 million on our balance sheet, so it [an IPO] wouldn’t be so much a financing opportunity. But I think in the next year or two we will consider an IPO form a marketing perspective.”

SEE ALSO: The competitors that could crush SoulCycle

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NOW WATCH: This stationary bike might be a SoulCycle killer

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Creating massive, custom settlements is an awesome addition to the “Fallout” franchise.

But while settlements are useful for gathering all your resources in one place, it’s generally more helpful to access your stockpiles of goods from any settlement: That way you won’t lose time constantly traveling back to the same town just to drop off some junk or pick up a weapon.

To connect your settlements in “Fallout 4,” you’ll have to create what are called “supply lines.”

Supply lines can only be established once you’ve reached the sixth tier in the “Charisma” upgrade tree, which showcases the Local Leader perk. You’ll need the first rank in that Local Leader perk to get started.

Once you’ve met those requisites, go find a settler at any one of your settlements. Then, activate your workshop menu — the button you hold to start building resources for your settlement. If you highlight over one of your settlers, you should see a “Supply Line” button option. Once you click that button, you’ll get to choose which settlement to send that settler to.

And that’s basically all you have to do!

To view your supply lines, check out the map on your Pip-Boy and you’ll see an option (highlighted at the bottom of the screen) to “show supply lines.” Click that and you’ll see all your supply lines light up, which will let you figure out which settlements still need to be connected:

You can create supply lines between any settlement, but you’ll need different settlers to connect all your settlements. If a settler is already en route to a settlement, don’t send them to a different settlement or you’ll break the supply line you already have.

If you’ve established a supply line but your settler hasn’t arrived in town yet, just sleep for a few hours (find a bed and choose the number of hours you want to stay) and then fast travel to the settlement you want to upgrade. Your settler should have arrived by then, which will allow you to start building up that remote settlement with all the resources you’ve collected in the original settlement.

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NOW WATCH: The best part of the new ‘Fallout’ is ripped straight from ‘Minecraft’

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BEIRUT (AP) — Drawing on thousands of combatants from Syria’s mix of religious and ethnic groups, a U.S.-backed alliance called the Syrian Democratic Forces has emerged as the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State group.

But the dominant role of Kurdish fighters in the alliance is a concern for majority Sunni Arab factions and their regional backers, raising questions about the group’s future role in a broader political context in Syria.

The coalition, which focuses on fighting the Islamic State, already faces opposition from other groups fighting to topple President Bashar Assad because those groups widely distrust the Kurds.

And while the coalition has been capturing territory steadily in northern Syria from the extremists, it is hampered greatly by its inability to retake areas with a majority Sunni Arab population.

In a devastated landscape where extremists and Islamic groups largely preside, the Syrian Democratic Forces are the closest thing to an inclusive and moderate fighting force in Syria. It represents the largest of the non-government fighting forces arrayed against IS in Syria, with some estimates putting the number of fighters affiliated with the group at nearly 40,000.

“The Syria Democratic Forces are the most organized in the Syrian chaos,” said Kurdish activist Mustafa Bali, speaking from the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria. He said the group has a united command stretching from the predominantly Kurdish town of al-Malikiyah in the east to Afrin in the west, with new members joining the alliance on daily basis.

The group is led by the main Kurdish fighting force in Syria, the People’s Protection Units, known as the YPG. It seeks to build on the success of the Euphrates Volcano, an alliance of Kurd and Arab factions that last year liberated Kobani from Islamic State militants.

It includes Arab forces such as the Sanadid force, mainly drawn from the Arab Shammar tribe; a Christian militia known as the Syriac Military Council, which includes Assyrians; the mainly Arab Jazira Brigades; the Seljuk Brigade, which consists mostly of Turkmen forces; and the Jaysh al-Thuwar group, which includes U.S.-backed rebels who were routed from Idlib and Aleppo provinces earlier this year by the al-Qaida branch in Syria, the Nusra Front.

Most of those groups are small and poorly equipped. Apart from the YPG, they lack military capabilities beyond defending their towns and villages.

The alliance was announced in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hassakeh on Oct. 10, a day after the U.S. said it was abandoning its effort to build a new rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State group, acknowledging the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters.

Instead, the U.S. said it would provide support for those already fighting the IS group, which also is known as ISIS, ISIL and its Arabic acronym, Daesh.

A few days after the new alliance was formed, the U.S. dropped weapons and ammunition to Arab forces in the alliance — an apparent effort to allay Turkish concerns about Washington’s support for the YPG. The YPG is seen by Turkey as an extension of the Kurdish PKK, which has waged a long insurgency against Ankara.

The alliance has said it wants to liberate Hassakeh province from IS and move on to the militants’ stronghold in Raqqa. U.S. officials have announced plans to deploy dozens of special operations forces in Syria to support it.

Last month, it successfully dislodged IS from the strategic town of Hol near the border with Iraq. That came just as the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq took over the town of Sinjar from the extremists, cutting off a main route from Raqqa to IS holdings in Iraq and making movements of fighters and supplies more difficult. It also has captured towns and villages in the province and is moving south toward the IS stronghold of Shaddadeh.

Col. Talal Sillu, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said although they have not received weapons from the U.S. beyond the one air drop, he is satisfied with the U.S.-led coalition’s response to their airstrike requests.

“They are participating with us effectively, and they are helping us in the victory against the Daesh terrorist organization,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

In its founding statement, the Syrian Democratic Forces said its aim beyond destroying IS was to build a democratic, pluralistic Syria “where all Syrian citizens of all sects enjoy freedom, justice and dignity.”

“Officially they represent a whole range of ethnicities and ostensibly the vision could be deemed moderate, but the coalition can only gain limited traction, as the YPG is justifiably perceived as the dominant actor to which the allied rebel groups in particular are junior partners,” said Aymen Tamimi, an expert on rebel and Islamic extremist groups and a fellow at the Middle East Forum think tank.

One of the alliance’s biggest challenges is reclaiming mostly Arab areas with a fighting force whose most effective combatants are Kurds.

“They added Arab groups to the alliance to dilute the Kurdish element, but everyone knows it’s the Wihdat,” said Abu Khaled, a rebel fighter loosely affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, using the Arabic abbreviation for the YPG.

“Their (YPG) record is not clean, and that is the biggest problem facing this alliance,” he said from Turkey, where he goes back and forth to Syria.

His comments reflected the wide distrust the YPG faces among mainstream rebels in Syria.

Many Arabs in northeastern Syria are wary of the Kurds’ creation of semiautonomous areas and have accused the YPG of ethnic cleansing and mass demolition of homes in Sunni areas captured from IS, including the key town of Tal Abyad in the summer. Amnesty International accused the group of committing war crimes in Tal Abyad.

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, said the blending of Arab tribes, Kurds and Christians with allied FSA factions is a “hugely beneficial development” — in theory.

“But the YPG’s overwhelmingly dominant role within the SDF has given the coalition a certain tinge that the vast majority of the conventional opposition are strongly in opposition to,” he said.

The distrust has been reinforced by clashes this week between mainstream rebels from the FSA and fighters from Jaish al-Thuwar, which is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Most of the fighting has been in a border area where Turkey is examining the possibility of creating a safe zone for civilians and Turkish-backed rebels fighting Assad’s forces.

A U.S. official acknowledged the group’s success in cutting IS supply lines in remote areas of eastern Syria but suggested the real test would be trying to retake a Sunni city.

“Their initial foray was good. They took some territory, they cut supply lines — all of that is very encouraging,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

With a political process steadily progressing, it is unclear what role the alliance can claim in Syria’s future.

Sillu, the SDF spokesman, said alliance representatives have not been invited to an upcoming meeting of Syrian opposition figures in Saudi Arabia, where a delegation will be picked to send to talks with representatives from Assad’s government.

That could lead to “infighting between us and other factions, since there are groups that will go and negotiate on our behalf,” he said.

Sillu, an ethnic Turkmen who was in the Syrian army for 21 years before retiring in 2005, dismissed suggestions the Kurds are the backbone of the force, saying they simply have the most experience fighting IS.

“Our project is a national one, but we don’t deny that at the beginning those who gave sacrifices are our Kurdish brothers. Then others joined,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Ken Dilanian in Washington contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is having trouble detecting fraud in asylum requests from immigrants seeking to stay in the United States for their protection.

A new study says problems at Citizenship and Immigration Services include a paper filing system that doesn’t allow officers to capture electronically some key information to detect fraud.

The Government Accountability Office study says neither the immigration service nor the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees federal immigration courts, conducts regular fraud risk assessments. The number of asylum requests has more than doubled in the last several years. The GAO found a backlog of 106,121 pending cases this year.

The report doesn’t address the refugee application process for people seeking to enter the country, which has become an issue in debate over Syrian refugees.

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The Golden State Warriors are seemingly unstoppable this season, making NBA history with a record winning streak to start the season.

Here’s why the defending champions are even more dangerous this season than ever before.

Produced by Lamar Salter. Original reporting by Scott Davis.

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Police are responding to a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California today, Dec. 2, with some reports saying as many as 20 may be dead.

There have already been more mass shootings than days in the year, according to the Washington Post.

The San Bernardino shooting happened the same day that Democrats and advocates for doctors held a press conference to urge Congress to lift the ban on gun violence research, which many experts say is critical to understanding why gun violence happens and what we can do to prevent it.

Gun violence in the United States is far more common than in any other developed country.

“The U.S. represents less than 5% of the 7.3 billion global population but accounted for 31% of global mass shooters during the period from 1966 to 2012, more than any other country,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Data from the liberal Center for American Progress suggests that this year gun deaths among young people in the US will finally surpass car accident deaths, which — unlike gun deaths — have been steadily declining:

It’s important to note, however, that most gun deaths in the US are not from mass shootings.

As Vox notes, mass shootings in 2013 killed 500 Americans. That’s a lot, but it represents only about 4.5% percent of the 11,200 gun homicides that year. And suicides by gun in 2013 killed almost 21,200 Americans.

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NOW WATCH: This monster shredder eats whole cars and spits them out in tiny pieces

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A startlingly simply method for cutting and pasting DNA has been making waves lately.

Scientists and policymakers are meeting in Washington, DC December 1-3 to debate the use of CRISPR/Cas9, a tool that makes it possible to make changes to an organism’s DNA almost as easily as cutting and pasting.

CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. These are short sections of DNA found in bacteria that help them fight off viruses, but can be used to modify the genome of many other organisms. Using a protein called Cas9, the cell can cut out a piece of DNA and replace it with a piece of one’s choosing.

The technique has people excited for its potential to revolutionize our understanding of biology and help cure deadly genetic diseases. 

Here’s how it works:

SEE ALSO: Scientists may soon be able to ‘cut and paste’ DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

NOW READ: CRISPR, the fancy new technology that lets people edit genes, could have an unprecedented and horrific consequence

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NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

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A startup called Mother Dirt has developed a “AO+ mist” — a spray containing a type of bacteria called AOB that you put on your skin, which may restore it to a natural, healthier state.

Our extreme, hygiene-obsessed routines are unnecessary, Jasmina Aganovic, president of Mother Dirt, told Business Insider. “We’ve confused ‘clean’ with ‘sterile,'” she said.

David Whitlock is the founding scientist of Mother Dirt’s research partner, AOBiome. Whitlock, who uses the spray religiously, told Business Insider he hasn’t showered in 12 years. Of course, Mother Dirt doesn’t recommend that its clients do this, and you should definitely still wash your hands.

But just to get a feel for the most extreme case, I attempted to stop showering for a week, and sprayed myself with AO+ mist instead.

Here’s what it was like:

SEE ALSO: A geneticist says any new parent should ‘roll their child on floor of the New York subway’ — here’s why

SEE ALSO: This controversial parenting theory about health and cleanliness will make you question your childhood

Why does this product exist? Just like our intestines, our skin is home to a rich ecosystem of bacteria and other microbes. Most are harmless, and some are actually good for us. For example, many animals contain ammonia-oxidizing bacteria or AOB, which break down the ammonia in sweat. AOB isn’t found on the skin of most modern humans, but studies have found it on the skin of the Yanomami people indigenous to the Amazon rainforest.

Every time we lather ourselves with soap and shampoo, we’re taking off bacteria like AOB. This ties into something called the hygiene hypothesis, which states that people who aren’t exposed to microbes as a child are more likely to develop allergies and other diseases because of a weakened immune system.

So I ordered a free sample of Mother Dirt’s AO+ mist, soap, and shampoo. It arrived in the mail a week later in a special temperature-controlled pouch (because the bacteria survive longer when kept cold).

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GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump claims he saw Muslim Americans celebrating after the terror attacks on September 11th in 2001, and now he’s getting heat from his own party.

New Jersey governor and fellow Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie told reporters that Trump’s claim that he saw thousands and thousands of people cheering in New Jersey are simply not true.

“It didn’t happen. And the fact is, you know, people can say anything. But the facts are the facts, and that did not happen in New Jersey that day, and it hasn’t happened since,” Christie said.

Following Trump’s initial claim, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson seemed to back him up. Carson told reporters that he too remembers seeing video of celebrations taking place in New Jersey after the attacks.

However, later that day, Carson’s campaign released a statement saying that he was not standing by his earlier statement.

Despite fact checkers and journalists claiming that Trump made up these celebrations, Trump continues to insist that they happened.

Rudy Giuliani, a Republican and former mayor of New York, told CNN that Trump is exaggerating. “We did have some celebrating,” he said, “That is true. We had pockets of celebration.”

Giuliani stopped short of saying that Trump was wrong or lying about thousands of people cheering. “If thousands of people were demonstrating and he saw it on television, there must be some tape of it somewhere,” he said.

The video many believe Trump may be referring to was aired on MTV in November 2001. It featured Emily Avecedo saying that she saw people with rocks and sticks saying “burn America.” However, in a newly released video, MTV News went back to Avecedo who now says that the kids she saw weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, and that she does not recall hearing anyone say “burn America.”

Story and editing by Andrew Fowler

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