Crowds prowl Google Street View to speed road repairs

POTHOLES, cracks, gnarly tree roots - the streets are full of nasty obstacles when they fall into disrepair. But an army of online workers could soon fix that, by whizzing virtually through neighbourhoods and earmarking encumbrances for a quick response from the local council. ...

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Japan suggests hotline to Beijing over island spat

TOKYO: Japan has suggested setting up a military hotline with China to avoid clashes between the two countries, which are at loggerheads over a group of disputed islands, Tokyo's defence minister said Saturday.The proposal came after Tokyo accused a Chinese frigate of locking its weapons-tracking radar on a Japanese destroyer -- a claim Beijing has denied.The incident, which Japan said...

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Apple and the iWatch conundrum

Will Apple ever make an iWatch?(Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET)Ever since the sixth-generation iPod Nano, lots of people have thought that Apple making its own branded watch is not merely a smart potential move but simply a matter of time. No matter what some have recently argued, I doubt, however, that today's Apple is hungry enough to create the fabled iWatch device.I've been covering the technology beat...

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Space Pictures This Week: Sun Dragon, Celestial Seagull

Solar DragonImage courtesy SDO/NASAResembling a dragon's tail, remnants of a solar filament strain to escape the sun's gravity in an image released this week by NASA's Solar Dynamics...

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Northeast Shuts Down as Blizzard Batters Millions

A blizzard of possibly historic proportions battered the Northeast Friday into Saturday, and forecasters feared as much as two feet of snow and strong winds could shut down densely populated cities such as New York and Boston, where cars were ordered off the streets.State officials declared states of emergencies throughout the region, and utilities estimated more than a half-million...

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Time to focus on the welfare of online workers

Crowdsourcing won’t catch on unless workers can be sure they’re getting a fair deal APPLE fans are a dedicated lot, queueing for hours or even days to snap up new iProducts. But in among the aficionados you will usually find hired hands, paid to wait in line on behalf of others with more money than time. ...

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29 killed in Iraq car bombs against Shiites

BAGHDAD: A spate of car bombs in Shiite areas of Iraq, including two blasts minutes apart at a popular bird market, killed at least 29 people on Friday, the latest in a spike in violence amid a political crisis.The attacks, which left nearly 70 others wounded, primarily targeted marketplaces that are often crowded on Fridays, the weekly holiday in Iraq, and took the death toll from a week...

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Crave giveaway: Nuance Dragon Dictate for Mac 3

Congrats to Craig L. of East Wenatchee, Wash., for winning a $200 gift certificate to geek shop KlearGear.com in last week's giveaway, and to Chuck V. of Eden Prairie, Minn., for a scoring a bag of CES swag the week before that. Now, on to this week's business... Are you a fan of speech recognition software? Put your hands up in the air. We're giving away a copy of the latest version of Nuance's Dragon...

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Asteroid to Make Closest Flyby in History

Talk about too close for comfort. In a rare cosmic encounter, an asteroid will barnstorm Earth next week, missing our planet by a mere 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers).Designated 2012 DA14, the space rock is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) across, and astronomers are certain it will zip harmlessly past our planet on February 15—but not before making history. It will pass within...

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Door-to-Door Search for Suspected Cop Killer

More than 100 police officers were going door-to-door and searching for new tracks in the snow in the hopes of catching suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner overnight in Big Bear Lake, Calif., before he strikes again as laid out in his chilling online manifesto.Police held a news conference late Thursday, alerting the residents near Big Bear Lake that Dorner was still on...

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Today on New Scientist: 6 February 2013

Open Richard III DNA evidence for peer review A good case has been made that a skeleton unearthed from a car park is that of the last Plantagenet king of England - it's time to share the dataUniversal bug sensor takes guesswork out of diagnosis A machine that can identify all bacteria, viruses and fungi known to cause disease in humans should speed up diagnosis and help to reduce antibiotic...

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Emergency calls to SCDF up 9%

SINGAPORE: The total number of calls to the Singapore Civil Defence Force's (SCDF) Emergency Ambulance Service rose by over 8 per cent - from 131,806 cases in 2011 to 142,549 cases in 2012.Emergency calls rose 9 per cent from 125,966 cases in 2011 to 137,341 cases in 2012. SCDF said the increase reflects the growing demand for ambulance services from an ageing population. The data was...

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Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen stepping down

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen.(Credit:Alcatel-Lucent)Alcatel-Lucent announced today that Ben Verwaayen is resigning after serving four years as the Franco-American network equipment maker.The imminent resignation of Verwaayen, who will stay on while the company's board searches for a replacement, was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal."Alcatel-Lucent has been an enormous part of my...

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Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and...

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Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to...

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Today on New Scientist: 5 February 2013

Engineering light: Pull an image from nowhere A new generation of lenses could bring us better lighting, anti-forgery technology and novel movie projectors Baby boomers' health worse than their parents Americans who were born in the wake of the second world war have poorer health than the previous generation at the same ageNew 17-million-digit monster is largest known prime A distributed computing...

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Bill introduced to protect private home buyers

SINGAPORE: Amendments to the Housing Developers (Control & Licensing) Bill was introduced in Parliament on Wednesday to protect the interests of home buyers of uncompleted private residential properties. Last year, the Housing Developers Rules were amended to better protect home buyers. Developers now have to provide scaled location plans, unit floor plans and detailed breakdowns of...

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Twitter gives Vine an NC-17 rating after porn controversy

Vine update asks for ID -- kind of.(Credit:Steven Musil/CNET)After a dustup over pornography showing up on Vine, the Twitter-owned video-sharing app has added an age rating for possible adult content.The app for iPhone and iPod Touch, which lets anyone create and share six-second clips, quickly became a popular venue for pornography after its release last month. Twitter responded by trying to make...

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues...

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Lance Armstrong Under Criminal Investigation

Federal investigators are in the midst of an active criminal investigation of disgraced former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, ABC News has learned.The revelation comes in stark contrast to statements made by the U.S. Attorney for Southern California, Andre Birotte, who addressed his own criminal inquiry of Armstrong for the first time publicly on Tuesday. Birotte's...

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Challenge unscientific thinking, whatever its source

Science may lean to the left, but that’s no reason to give progressives who reject it a “free pass” IF SCIENCE could vote, who would it vote for? Ask scientists, and a clear answer comes back: science leans to the left. A 2009 survey conducted by Pew...

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