NASA planet-hunter is injured and resting

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter(Image: NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel)NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope has put its search for alien Earths on hold while it rests a stressed reaction wheel.The injured wheel normally helps to control the telescope's orientation, keeping it pointed continuously at the same patch of sky. Kepler stares at the thousands of stars in its field of view...

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Tennis: Serena, Murray suck it up to reach sweet 16

MELBOURNE: Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka came through their first uncomfortable moments and Andy Murray was also tested before reaching the Australian Open's last 16 on Saturday.Williams, eyeing a calendar-year Grand Slam, was broken for the first time in the tournament by Japanese number one Ayumi Morita, before recovering from 0-3 down in the second set to win 6-1, 6-3.Defending...

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Crave Ep. 105: How to clip your nails in space

How to clip your nails in space, Ep. 105Subscribe to Crave:iTunes (HD) | iTunes (SD) | iTunes (HQ)RSS (HD) | RSS (SD) | RSS (HQ) This week on Crave, we're back from CES with a look at some of the wackier stuff we spotted at the show. Then, Canadian astronaut Christopher Hadfield gives us a highly important grooming lesson on the safest way to clip our nails in outer space, and...

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and...

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Armstrong Tearful Over Telling Kids Truth

Lance Armstrong, 41, began to cry today as he described finding out his son Luke, 13, was publicly defending him from accusations that he doped during his cycling career.Armstrong said that he knew, at that moment, that he would have to publicly admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs and having oxygen-boosting blood transfusions when competing in the Tour de France. He...

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Wind turbines supercharged with superconductors

WIND turbines may soon get a supercharge. Turbines wound with superconducting wire instead of regular copper could turn today's 2 to 3-megawatt generators into 10-megawatt powerhouses, say teams in Europe and the US that are racing to produce the machines. ...

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Cycling: Livestrong "disappointed" by Armstrong's deception

WASHINGTON: Livestrong, the cancer charity founded by disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, said on Thursday it was "disappointed" that he had deceived the organization and many others about doping."We at the Livestrong Foundation are disappointed by the news that Lance Armstrong misled people during and after his cycling career, including us," it said after the broadcast of Armstrong's interview...

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Crave giveaway: Laptop bag packed with CES 2013 swag

Gear, glorious gear. (Click to enlarge.)(Credit:James Martin/CNET)Last year, readers liked our CES swag giveaway so much that we're doing one again this year -- in a big way. CNET staffers collected so many great goodies at CES 2013 that we have enough freebies for two separate giveaways. This week's winner will score, among other prizes, an itty-bitty 1GB NewKube Kube MP3 player; a Moshi VersaCover...

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Opinion: Lance One of Many Tour de France Cheaters

Editor's note: England-based writer and photographer Roff Smith rides around 10,000 miles a year through the lanes of Sussex and Kent and writes a cycling blog at: www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.ukAnd so, the television correspondent said to the former Tour de France champion, a man who had been lionised for years, feted as the greatest cyclist of his day, did you ever use drugs in the course...

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Armstrong Admits to Doping, 'One Big Lie'

Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.After years of denying that he had taken...

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Kinect sensor poised to leap into everyday life

WHEN Microsoft's Kinect gaming sensor first exploded onto the gaming scene in 2010, it wasn't long before people started getting excited about what it might make possible. But despite some imaginative hacks, and even a stint in the operating...

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PAP's Dr Koh says he is fighting his own race in by-election

SINGAPORE: People's Action Party (PAP) candidate for Punggol East, Dr Koh Poh Koon, said he is fighting his own race in the by-election.Dr Koh also stressed that the lack of PAP leaders' presence in his walkabout does not signify that the party places less emphasis on this by-election.Dr Koh said he prefers to offer a personal touch by interacting directly with residents and believes constituents...

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CNET Member Giveaway: Fitbit Flex

Fitbit Flex(Credit:Fitbit)After a great CES full of exciting tech and new ideas, we are back and hard at work. A little tired, but also thrilled to bring an exciting opportunity to the CNET audience. We'd like our users to be able to experience a little CES, so we are giving five lucky CNET members the chance to win the Best of CES award-winning Fitbit Flex. Coming out this spring, the Fitbit Flex...

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6 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You

Photograph by AP Photo/Marcio Jose SanchezThe planet keeps getting hotter, new data showed this week. Especially in America, where 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded, by far. Every few years, the U.S. federal government engages hundreds of experts to assess the impacts of climate change, now and in the future. From agriculture (pictured) to infrastructure to how humans consume energy, the National...

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Notre Dame: Football Star Was 'Catfished' in Hoax

Notre Dame's athletic director and the star of its near-championship football team said the widely-reported death of the star's girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and the player said he was duped by it as well.Manti Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy,...

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Why musical genius comes easier to early starters

Good news for pushy parents. If you want your child to excel musically, you now have better justification for starting their lessons early. New evidence comes from brain scans of 36 highly skilled musicians, split equally between those who started lessons before and after the age of 7, but who had done a similar amount of...

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Helicopter crashes in central London

LONDON - A helicopter crashed in central London and plunged to the ground in a ball of flames on Wednesday, with police saying it had hit a crane on top of a building.Fire engines and police were at the scene of the crash near the River Thames at Vauxhall, where a huge plume of smoke billowed into the sky.Paul Ferguson, who was working in an office near the incident, told BBC News: "There...

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Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz 'hacking' case comes under fire

Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts(Credit:U.S. Department of Justice)A politically ambitious Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case against Aaron Swartz has come under fire for alleged prosecutorial abuses that led the 26-year-old online activist to take his own life.Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who was selected by President Obama, compared the...

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Mars Rover Finds Intriguing New Evidence of Water

The first drill sample ever collected on Mars will come from a rockbed shot through with unexpected veins of what appears to be the mineral gypsum.Delighted members of the Curiosity science team announced Tuesday that the rover was now in a virtual "candy store" of scientific targets—the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay, is filled with many different materials that could...

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NRA Ad Calls Obama 'Elitist Hypocrite'

Jan 16, 2013 12:04am Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP PhotoAs the White House prepares to unveil a sweeping plan aimed at curbing gun violence, the National Rifle Association has launched a preemptive, personal attack on President Obama, calling him an “elitist hypocrite” who, the group claims, is putting American children at risk.In 35-second video posted online Tuesday...

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Poison pill: Not all mercury is toxic

A global treaty on mercury pollution will do more harm than good if it bans the vaccine preservative thiomersal NEXT week, governments from around the world will gather in Geneva to finalise a long-overdue treaty on mercury. The aim of the negotiations is laudable: to ban those mercury-laden products and pollutants...

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