Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea









































































































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Boehner on Fiscal Cliff Talks: 'You Can't Be Serious'













President Obama and his White House team appear to have drawn a line in the sand in talks with House Republicans on the "fiscal cliff."


Tax rates on the wealthy are going up, the only question is how much?


"Those rates are going to have to go up," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flatly stated on ABC's "This Week." "There's no responsible way we can govern this country at a time of enormous threat, and risk, and challenge ... with those low rates in place for future generations."


But the president's plan, which Geithner delivered last week, has left the two sides far apart.


In recounting his response today on "Fox News Sunday," House Speaker John Boehner said: "I was flabbergasted. I looked at him and said, 'You can't be serious.'


"The president's idea of negotiation is: Roll over and do what I ask," Boehner added.


The president has never asked for so much additional tax revenue. He wants another $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, including returning the tax rate on income above $250,000 a year to 39.6 percent.






TOBY JORRIN/AFP/Getty Images















Obama Balances Fiscal Cliff, Defense Department Appointment Watch Video





Boehner is offering half that, $800 billion.


In exchange, the president suggests $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and other programs. House Republicans say that is not enough, but they have not publicly listed what they would cut.


Geithner said the ball is now in the Republicans' court, and the White House is seemingly content to sit and wait for Republicans to come around.


"They have to come to us and tell us what they think they need. What we can't do is to keep guessing," he said.


The president is also calling for more stimulus spending totaling $200 billion for unemployment benefits, training, and infrastructure projects.


"All of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table," Boehner said.


Boehner also voiced some derision over the president's proposal to strip Congress of power over the country's debt level, and whether it should be raised.


"Congress is not going to give up this power," he said. "It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone."


The so-called fiscal cliff, a mixture of automatic tax increases and spending cuts, is triggered on Jan. 1 if Congress and the White House do not come up with a deficit-cutting deal first.


The tax increases would cost the average family between $2,000 and $2,400 a year, which, coupled with the $500 billion in spending cuts, will most likely put the country back into recession, economists say.



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Weaver ants help flowers get the best pollinator









































MOST flowers don't want pesky ants hanging around scaring away would-be pollinators. Not so the Singapore rhododendron - the first flower found to recruit ants to chase poor pollinators away.












Francisco Gonzálvez at EEZA, the arid zone experimental station in Almeria, Spain, and colleagues studied flowers frequented by large carpenter bees (Xylocopa) and a much smaller solitary bee, Nomia. The larger bees seemed to be better pollinators - setting far more fruit than the smaller bees.












The team found that Nomia avoided plants with weaver ant patrols, and when they did dare to land, were chased away or ambushed by the ants. Being so much bigger, carpenter bees weren't troubled by the ants (Journal of Ecology, DOI:10.1111/1365-2745.12006).












Plants usually produce chemical repellents to scare off insects that prey on their pollinators. But lab tests suggested Gonzálvez's flowers were actively attracting weaver ants, although how remains a mystery. The team thinks carpenter bees choose flowers with ants so they don't have to compete with Nomia.












Michael Kaspari of the University of Oklahoma in Norman says this is a new kind of plant-ant interaction, and that the team makes a "strong case" for the rhododendron manipulating the behaviour of weaver ants to ward off inefficient pollinators.


















































If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.




































All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.


If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.








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N Korea notifies Japan of rocket path: report






SEOUL: North Korea has notified neighbours including Japan of the trajectory of the rocket it plans to launch this month, a report said on Sunday, after international condemnation of the move by the nuclear-armed state.

The communist North announced on Saturday it would launch a rocket sometime between December 10 and 22 -- its second long-range rocket launch this year after a much-hyped but botched attempt in April.

Washington and Seoul urged Pyongyang to scrap the launch while Tokyo reportedly postponed talks due next week with North Korea and ordered its military to prepare to shoot down the rocket if it goes over Japan.

"The North has notified aviation authorities in nations including Japan that could come under potential danger ... of the timing and expected path (of the rocket)," Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed senior Seoul official as saying.

China and the Philippines were also likely to have been notified, it added.

The North said on Saturday the rocket would blast off "southward" from its Sohae Space Centre in the country's northwest.

"A safe flight path has been chosen so that parts of the carrier rocket that might fall during the launch process would not affect neighbouring countries," it said.

It added Pyongyang would "fully comply" with relevant international rules for the launch, which some analysts said was aimed at stirring patriotism and support for the country's young, inexperienced ruler Kim Jong-Un.

Pyongyang also repeated its claim made during its April launch that the rocket was aimed at promoting "the use of space for peaceful purposes" by placing a polar-orbiting earth observation satellite into orbit.

But the US and its allies view the launch as a disguised test for an inter-continental ballistic missile banned under UN resolutions triggered by Pyongyang's two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

- AFP/xq



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McAfee nabbed? His blog says maybe, following CNN interview



The bizarre real-life potboiler concerning on-the-lam antivirus-software pioneer John McAfee continued today, as -- following a cloak-and-dagger CNN interview with the fugitive -- McAfee's own blog posted an item saying he may have been captured at the Belize-Mexico border.


The item, pictured above and reported earlier by news agency AFP, says little more than that and calls the report of the capture "unconfirmed." We'll update this post -- or link to a new, separate story -- when we know more. (Editor's note: See bottom of story for updates.)



Earlier, CNN managed to track McAfee down for an on-camera interview somewhere in his longtime country of residence, Belize -- where he's in hiding after his neighbor was shot to death. A CNN article accompanying an online video of the interview says its reporter had to provide a secret password and partake in a secret-agent-like, twisting-and-turning
car ride to get to the millionaire turned mystery man.


In the brief interview, which you can check out here, McAfee says, "I will certainly not turn myself in, and I will certainly not quit fighting. I will not stop my blog." He says he'll either get arrested or get away and clarifies that "Get away doesn't mean leave the country. It means they will, No. 1, find the murderer of Mr. Faull and, No. 2, the people of this country -- who are by and large terrified to speak out -- start speaking out,"


McAfee has been on the run since November 12, when his neighbor Gregory Faull was discovered with a bullet in his head. McAfee and Faull had reportedly had run-ins with each other over McAfee's dogs and armed security guards. In an interview with Wired that same day, McAfee said he thought the killers had actually been looking for him and not Faull.


Other aspects of the tale include the fact that the 67-year-old McAfee's home was raided in May and that police said they found multiple unlicensed firearms and McAfee with a 17-year-old girl. They also said he was manufacturing an antibiotic in his home without a license. McAfee's blog provides another unusual twist. Apparently begun about a week after Faull's murder, it includes entries from McAfee himself about his flight. In one such post, McAfee writes that he is traveling with a 20-year-old woman named Samantha, whom he credits with helping to keep him fed, clothed, and in hiding:



"She has also helped me evade detection by grabbing me and kissing me, in public, in a fashion that causes passerby's to feel embarrassment at the thought of staring and by creating emotional scenes that cause the curious to momentarily forget what they were looking for," he wrote. "She is acutely aware of her surroundings and is as street smart as a sober hobo."


Today's CNN report noted that police in Belize have said they don't consider McAfee a suspect in the killing; they want him only for questioning. The news agency also noted that McAfee maintains that his troubles began when he refused to bribe a government official and that he will be killed if he's arrested.


Again, the post on McAfee's whoismcafee.com/The Hinterland blog says the report of McAfee's capture is unconfirmed, so it remains to be seen if it turns out to be true. If nothing else, however, the post adds yet another chapter to this strangely unfolding tale.


Update, December 2 at 12:23 a.m. PT:
Peter Delevett at the San Jose Mercury News' SiliconBeat blog is reporting that McAfee has not been apprehended and is still on the run.


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Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea









































































































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Wikileaks Case: Guards Deny Intimidating Manning


gty bradley manning dm 121108 wblog Bradley Mannings Former Guards Testify About Controversial Incident

(Brendan Smialkowski/AFP/Getty Images)


Bradley Manning’s former guards testified today that they did not intimidate the man accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrets website Wikileaks during  a Jan. 18, 2011 incident that resulted in Manning being placed on a temporary suicide risk watch.


Manning’s attorneys cite the event as a key reason why his pre-trial confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., was unlawful and warrants the dismissal of the charges against him.


Manning faces life imprisonment on charges that he leaked the classified military and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.  Details of those charges will come at a trial scheduled for February and are not being discussed at this week’s hearing, which is focused on his nine-month confinement at Quantico from July 2010 to April 2011.


On Jan. 18, 2011 Manning was being moved to his daily “recreation call” in a room at the brig when he experienced an apparent anxiety attack.  Manning said Thursday the guards escorting him seemed to have an aggressive attitude that made him feel nervous and ultimately feel faint.


Manning testified Thursday that he “lost my demeanor” during a later discussion with brig officials about the incident that led them to place him on temporary suicide risk watch.


Former Marine guards Lance Corporal Joshua Tankersly and Lance Corporal Jonathan Cline testified today that Manning had been moving around while his hand and leg restraints were placed on him for the escort to the exercise room.  They said they reminded Manning that he should respond properly to their orders by referring to their ranks when he answered them.


When Manning entered the recreation room they described a situation in which Manning fell backwards and landed on his backside.


They then said that when out of his leg restraints Manning ran to a weightlifting machine, hid behind it and began to cry.  Both Cline and Tankersly said they could not explain Manning’s behavior.  Both guards were ordered to leave the room and were replaced by two other guards who escorted Manning back to his cell.


Cline said he was puzzled when a supervisor later told him “we intimidated him or something like that.”


Each guard said he could not recall if they sounded harsh when they talked to Manning on the way to the exercise room.


They both said that aside from the January incident, Manning was courteous and professional in his interactions with them.  Both described him as an average prisoner, though Tankersly acknowledged that Manning was a high profile detainee who had the attention of high-ranking officials at the base.


“It’s hard to put ‘average’ on such a high profile, when you have higher ups on base come and check through to that see all was OK,” Tankersly said.


Gunnery Sgt. William Fuller, one of the senior officers at the brig, also testified today about his participation in a Classification and Assessment board that routinely assessed whether Manning’s Maximum Custody and Prevention of Injury status should be downgraded. The board never reduced Manning’s status during his stay.


Fuller acknowledged that before the January incident he and another brig official had considered a downgrade because Manning was “doing pretty good.”


He said the Jan. 18incident “kind of reset things … we had to keep him on Prevention of Injury.”


Fuller also cited Manning’s quiet interactions with him as a reason for keeping Manning on that status.


According to Fuller “he wouldn’t communicate … it seemed like he didn’t really want to talk” and that concerned him, given training he had received that being withdrawn could be an indicator of suicidal behavior.


Fuller admitted that the conversations were really just quick interactions to see how Manning was doing..  When asked to provide examples of longer exchanges he had with other prisoners, Fuller provided brief sentences.  That led David Coombs, Manning’s defense attorney to say sarcastically, “so if he’d thrown in more words then he would have classified as a Chatty Patty?”


Manning’s attorneys claim that a protest on Jan. 17 by Manning supporters, at the entrance to the base, may have motivated an aggressive attitude towards the detainee.


Cline recalled other guards “were annoyed” by the protest” because it would close parts of the base and hinder or interrupt how they got home.”  But Tankersly said the protest had no impact on Manning’s treatment.

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 30 November 2012







Dinosaurs might have once gazed into the Grand Canyon

It had been thought that the canyon formed 6 million years ago, but now two geologists say it is actually closer to 70 million years old



Saturn's rings may double up as a moon factory

A new model suggests Saturn's famous rings spawned the planet's moons. Could the mechanism explain the moons of Uranus, Neptune and even Earth?



Gaming the future: the best of 2012

New Scientist looks back at the video games that explored the boundaries of science and technology this year



Friday Illusion: Mystery mirror reveals missing banana

A prize for the first person to figure out how a strange mirror image remains in view



Syria again disconnects nation from the internet

Once again, the Syrian government appears to have pulled the plug on the internet, cutting off its citizens from the rest of the world



Crowdfund your area's projects one brick at a time

As the recession bites and budgets are cut, websites are springing up that allow citizens to club together to fund everything from parks to bridges



Omniphobia: the stuffs that stick at nothing

Whether it's water, oil, ketchup or ants, materials that repel everything that touches them are on the way, says Jessica Griggs



Feedback: Commas in breach of copyright

Why these words break the law, impure apples, Google rewrites the history of everything, and more



A quantum of... We want to see your movies!

The deadline for the Quantum Shorts Film Competition is hard on us and we've already had some amazing entries - submit yours before Sunday



LHC sees hint of high-speed particle pancake

Purely by accident, the Higgs-boson-hunting Large Hadron Collider may have stumbled upon a rare state of matter called a colour-glass condensate



Social bee-haviour: The secret life of the hive

Bees have a brain the size of a pinhead, yet their daily activities rival the range of behaviours seen in many mammals



Florida pet spa mystery link to China's great firewall

China's censors have innovative ways of stopping its citizens accessing banned websites, including poisoning internet servers



Giant tortoises bounce back in the Galapagos

A slow and steady rescue mission has seen the population of the iconic creatures on Española Island leap from just 12 into the thousands



Messenger finds hints of ice at Mercury's poles

The innermost planet of the solar system could harbour a small polar habitable zone - but the chances of finding life there are remote



Projections of sea level rise are vast underestimates

Estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 were wildly wrong





Read More..

North Korea to launch rocket in December: KCNA






SEOUL: North Korea plans to launch a long-range rocket between December 10 and 22, the North's official news agency said Saturday.

In a statement carried by Korean Central News Agency, the Korean Committee for Space Technology said it planned to launch a working satellite after scientists had studied mistakes made during a failed rocket launch in April.

"Scientists and technicians of the DPRK analysed the mistakes that were made during the previous April launch and deepened the work of improving the reliability and precision of the satellite and carrier rocket, thereby rounding off the preparations for launch," it said.

The rocket was intended to put a polar-orbiting earth observation satellite into orbit, it said.

In April, North Korea failed with a much-hyped launch of an Unha-3 rocket that Pyongyang also said was aimed at placing a satellite in orbit.

The United States and United Nations insisted it was a disguised ballistic missile test using a three-stage variant of the Taepodong-2 inter-continental ballistic missile.

The April test put a halt to the latest international effort to engage North Korea, with the United States calling off plans to deliver badly needed food assistance.

The UN Security Council Thursday warned North Korea against carrying out another launch bid after intense speculation that it was preparing for a new missile test.

"We all agree it would be extremely inadvisable to proceed with the test," the head of the North Korea sanctions committee at the council, Portuguese ambassador Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral told reporters.

- AFP/ck



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Android-based Ouya game console shipping soon



Early birds get their hands on Ouya after December 28.



(Credit:
Ouya)


Let the gamers,
Android nuts, and open-source geeks rejoice -- the Ouya is shipping on time!


Well, at least the developers' consoles are, that is. Ouya first garnered attention by raising more than $8.5 million on Kickstarter this summer to create an inexpensive, open-source, Android-based game system.


Early supporters of the crowdfunding campaign got first dibs on a finished Ouya for as little as $95, but those aren't scheduled to ship until March. However, the hundreds of folks who ponied up $699 or more for a first-run, rooted developers' system with early SDK access get to experience Christmas twice in the same week when their consoles ship on December 28.


If creators of the Ouya do fulfill their original commitment to ship the dev kits in December, they'll deserve kudos. Plenty of other Kickstarter-funded projects have run into snags meeting original timelines and commitments -- the Pebble watch is now months late on its original ship date and still working out production issues, for example.



Ouya points out that all consoles will actually be dev kits, but the late December batch is a special group that cost more to produce and give big early backers a first crack at working with the platform. The only catch for developers is that at least some part of the game play has to be available for free, be it a demo or the whole shebang.


Ouya is also working on its own ODK (Ouya development kit) that game designers will be able to access. At the same time, Ouya says it's been busy optimizing Android Jelly Bean for gameplay on a large screen.


If Ouya takes off, 2013 could be a year in which a certain segment of the population gets even less exposure to the sun than in the past.


If you missed out on the first Ouya rush, there's still a chance to get in on the ground floor noob level. Ouya is giving away 10 developers' consoles next month.


Read More..