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 happened last week, marked the first time the two nations' navies have locked horns in a territorial dispute that provoked fears of armed conflict breaking out between the two.

The neighbours -- also the world's second and third-largest economies -- have seen ties sour over the uninhabited Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea, known as Senkaku in Tokyo and Diaoyu by Beijing, which also claims them.

"What's important is to create a hotline, so that we would be able to communicate swiftly when this kind of incident happens," Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters.

He said Tokyo told Beijing on Thursday through its embassy in China that it wants to resume talks on creating a "seaborne communication mechanism" between military officials of both countries.

In 2010 China and Japan agreed to establish a hotline between political leaders following a series of naval incidents, but the plan has yet to materialise.

Defence officials of the two countries also agreed in 2011 to set up a military-to-military hotline by the end of last year, but the talks stalled due to heightened tensions over the territorial row.

Onodera also said Japan was considering disclosing evidence to bolster its accusation of the lock-on incident, after Beijing rejected the charge.

"We have evidence. The government is considering the extent of what can be disclosed", because it includes confidential information on Japan's defence capability, Onodera said.

The comments came after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demanded Beijing apologise and admit the incident took place.

Tokyo has also charged that last month a Chinese frigate's radar locked on to a Japanese helicopter, in a procedure known as "painting" that is a precursor to firing weaponry.

For both alleged incidents, on January 19 and January 30, China's defence ministry said in a statement to AFP that the Chinese ship-board radar maintained normal operations and "fire-control radar was not used".

Onodera said on Saturday that Japan could prove the frigate used a fire-control radar, instead of an early-warning radar that China insists was used as part of normal operations.

"An early-warning radar turns around repeatedly, while a fire-control radar keeps pointing to a moving ship that it targets at," Onodera said.

"We have evidences that the radar followed after our ship for a certain period of time," he said, adding that Japan recorded a radio frequency that is peculiar to a fire-control radar.

The long-running row over the islands intensified in September when Tokyo nationalised part of the chain, triggering fury in Beijing and huge anti-Japan demonstrations across China.

Beijing has repeatedly sent ships and aircraft near the islands and both sides have scrambled fighter jets, though there have been no clashes.

"Activities of Chinese official ships around Senkaku islands have calmed", since Tuesday, when Japan disclosed the radar incident, Onodera said.

Abe, the hawkish Japanese premier, on Thursday called the incident "extremely regrettable", "dangerous" and "provocative", but also said dialogue must remain an option.

- AFP/ck

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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 long enough to feel, no, smell certain shifts in the gadget market. I'm talking about those cycles when a new product category springs up from nowhere and first seems like a completely goofy notion. Soon after, the segment really heats up with scores of companies jumping into the fray to make a quick buck.

Traditionally, if Apple senses a legitimate opportunity it steps in at the right moment after figuring out the secret to success and sucks the air right out of the market.
Tablets and MP3 players existed well before Apple launched the
iPod and iPad, but their arrival completely transformed the playing field. Remember music players from Creative Labs, Rio, or even Microsoft's clunky Windows Tablet PCs?

I'm getting the same tingling sensation right now from smartwatches. At
CES in January the sleeper hit of the show was wearable tech, essentially devices you could strap or clip to yourself as you would an accessory or article of clothing. A lot of smartwatches, fitness bands, or some hybrid of the two, were talked up at the conference.

These included everything from the long-awaited and crowd-funded Pebble and the Dick Tracy/007-inspired Martian Passport Watch to the Fitbit Flex fitness tracker and the Basis Band. When you factor in the success of the Nike FuelBand, Nike being a company Apple has partnered with in the past to create fitness products, I'd say the time is ripe for Apple to swoop in for the kill.

Chat through the Martian Passport like a speakerphone.

(Credit:
Brian Bennett/CNET)

This is a move the Cupertino company used to accomplish without breaking a sweat. Apple has the knack of catching the competition completely flat-footed, surprising since many already had a big head start. The iPhone is a perfect example. Smartphones had existed for years but the iPhone sounded the death knell for Microsoft's struggling Windows Mobile products -- trust me, I was saddled with a T-Mobile Wing at the time. The Sidekick and a legion of keyboarded feature phones suffered the same fate.

I'm afraid Apple hasn't demonstrated its signature ferocity in recent years. We haven't seen a truly disruptive product from the company since the first iPad. Every noteworthy hardware release since then has been evolutionary and incremental, not transformative. The iPad Mini is simply a smaller iPad, while the iPhone 5 essentially increased the screen from 3.7 to 4 inches. Its A6 processor is also dual-core where many Android CPUs have gone to full quad-core and it received 4G LTE well after its rivals.

What Apple needs here is true out-of-the-box action to quell the doubters at large and on Wall Street. A serious example of nonlinear thinking that matches the creation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Something that would merge multiple gadgets and applications into something entirely new or perhaps clean up the confused mess other manufacturers tout as useful gadgets. Something like a fabulous, shiny Apple iWatch.

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Sun Dragon, Celestial Seagull

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Solar Dragon

  Image courtesy SDO/NASA

  Resembling 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 Observatory.

  Most of the electrically charged gas, imaged in extreme ultraviolet light, was unsuccessful in its escape attempt and fell back into the sun.

  Filaments form when magnetic field lines push out of the sun in loops, holding dense gas above the surface of the sun. (Read about a huge solar filament that erupted in August 2012.)

  —Jane J. Lee and Christine Dell'Amore

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Aurora On The Road

  Photograph by Marcel Mivelaz, My Shot

  Northern lights writhe behind a thin cloud layer above a road on Ringvassoya Island, Norway, in this picture submitted to National Geographic's My Shot photography community on January 31.

  Born of violent eruptions of plasma from the sun's surface, auroras occur when the ejected gas slams into the protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field. (Watch a video about the birth of auroras.)

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Celestial Seagull

  Image courtesy ESO

  Like a parrot perched on a pirate's arm, the Seagull Nebula resides in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.

  This new image, released by the European Southern Observatory on February 6, shows a closeup of one of the "wings" of the Seagull Nebula. Red clouds of hydrogen gas glow from the intense ultraviolet radiation given off with the birth of stars.

  The entire nebula is actually comprised of three large gas clouds arranged in the shape of a bird. (See pictures of other nebulae.)

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Saturn's North Pole

  Image courtesy Caltech/SSI/NASA

  Saturn's hexagon-shaped north pole is lit by the sun now that spring has come to the planet's northern hemisphere, as seen in a NASA picture released this week.

  The 15,000-mile-wide (25,000-kilometer-wide) cloud formation, captured by the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera in November, was initially spied during the Voyager missions in the 1980s. (See another Cassini picture of the hexagon.)

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Martian Avalanches

  Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

  A 2011 frost avalanche kicks up dust on Mars in a picture released this week by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera team.

  Frost avalanches usually occur at the onset of the Martian spring, when layers of carbon dioxide frost warm, causing ice and dust to cascade off of cliffs.

  "While HiRISE has captured other frost avalanches before, they never cease to amaze, since it demonstrates that there are indeed active processes on the red planet," according to the HiRISE website. (Related: "First Mars Avalanches Seen In Action.")

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Luminous London

  Photograph courtesy NASA

  London gleams in a nighttime picture taken from the International Space Station on February 2.

  Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield captured the English city while flying about 240 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESA

  Published February 8, 2013

  
  

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Great Energy Challenge Blog

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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 customers were without power by late Friday night.

Some wondered if the storm could top Boston's all-time single-storm snowfall record of 27.6 inches, set in 2003.

By 9 p.m. Friday, according to the National Weather Service, the storm was spinning off the coast of Long Island, N.Y., and expected to move north-northeastward past New England's coast before its effects tapered off on Saturday afternoon.

"Storm total snowfall accumulations of 1 to 2 feet ... with locally higher amounts are possible across much of the Northeast," the National Weather Service said. "The heaviest snow is forecast to fall across parts of eastern Massachusetts ... Connecticut and Rhode Island where snowfall amounts higher than two feet are possible. In addition to the heavy snowfall ... wind gusts as high as 70 mph are possible ... especially near the coasts."

By 9 p.m. Friday, parts of Connecticut and New York had the highest actual snowfall totals listed by the National Weather Service, with 13 inches measured in Ogdensburg and East Setaukey, N.Y., and Lisbon and North Branford, Conn.

Peak wind gusts included a 71-mph measurement in Buzzards Bay, Mass., the National Weather Service said.

Power outages also were reported across the region. As of 11 p.m. Friday, for instance, approximately 300,000 Massachusetts customers were without power, ABC News station WCVB reported. Utilities also reported approximately 170,000 without power in Rhode Island, 30,000 in Connecticut and nearly 20,000 in New York.

The blizzard conditions came together after a storm from the west joined forces with one from the south to form a nor'easter.

Hurricane Sandy Victims Hit Again, Survivors Prepare for Worst Watch Video

Weather Forecast: Blizzard Headed for Northeast Watch Video

The storm showed the potential for such ferocity that, before it even hit with full force, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon and signed an executive order banning vehicular traffic on roads in his state effective at 4 p.m. ET. It was believed that the last time the state enacted such a ban was during the blizzard of 1978. Violating the ban could result in a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $500 fine.

"[It] could definitely be a historic winter storm for the Northeast," said Adrienne Leptich of the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y. "We're looking at very strong wind and heavy snow and we're also looking for some coastal flooding."

Airlines began shutting down operations Friday afternoon at major airports in the New York area as well as in Boston, Portland, Maine, Providence, R.I., and other Northeastern airports. By early evening Friday, more than 4,300 flights had been cancelled on Friday and Saturday, according to FlightAware. Airlines hoped to resume flights by Saturday afternoon, though normal schedules were not expected until Sunday.

The snow fell heavily Friday afternoon in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said clearing the roads was his main concern, and the city readied 1,700 snow plows and 250,000 tons of salt to clear the streets.

New York City was expecting up to 14 inches of snow, which started falling early this morning, though the heaviest amounts were expected to fall at night and into Saturday. Wind gusts of 55 mph were expected in New York City.

"Stay off the city streets. Stay out of your cars and stay at home while the worst of the storm is on us," Bloomberg said Friday.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy declared a state of emergency, deploying National Guard troops across the state to assist in rescues and other emergencies. Schools and state courthouses were closed, and all flights after 1:30 p.m. at Bradley Airport, north of Hartford, Conn., were cancelled. The state's largest utility companies planned for the possibility that 30 percent of customers -- more than 400,000 homes and businesses -- would lose power.

Malloy also directed drivers to stay off the state's major highways.

"Please stay off of 95, 91, 84, Merritt Parkway and any other limited-access road in the state," he said Friday evening.

PHOTOS: Northeast Braces for Snowstorm

Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other New England cities canceled school today.

"Stay off the streets of our city. Basically, stay home," Boston Mayor Tom Menino warned Thursday.

On Friday, Menino applauded the public's response.

"I'm very pleased with the compliance with the snow emergency," he said. "You drive down some of the roadways, you don't see one car."

Friday evening, Gov. Patrick also applauded the public's cooperation with the statewide vehicle ban, noting the clear roads were helping utility crews get their work done.

"It's been a great, great help and I thank everyone," Patrick said. "I know it's been an imposition."

As of 4:30 p.m. Friday, according to the Department of Defense, 837 National Guard soldiers and airmen under state control had been activated in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York in anticipation of the storm -- 552 in Massachusetts, 235 in Connecticut and 50 in New York. The extra hands were helping with roadways, transportation, making wellness checks on residents and other emergency services.

Beach erosion and coastal flooding was possible from New Jersey to Long Island, N.Y., and into New England coastal areas. It was feared some waves off the coast could reach more than 20 feet.

Read More..

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.

That kind of work might seem trivial. It is certainly casual: paid queuers at the Apple store have often struck ad hoc deals without any of the trappings of employment. Why does that matter? Because soon many more people may work like them.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk got the "crowd-working" ball rolling, allowing anyone to recruit an army of helpers to perform online tasks on their behalf. Now it's being emulated in the physical world, as companies like TaskRabbit help their customers to outsource chores like laundry, shopping - or even assembling flat-pack furniture - to a legion of temporary personal assistants.

Reputation is as critical in these marketplaces as in any other. Workers are rated on their performance, with higher scores likely to attract more and better work. But that usually cuts only one way. For example, Mechanical Turk's workers have no vehicle for expressing discontent with their taskmasters. It's been left to third parties to create a feedback system that provides some transparency (see "Crowdsourcing grows up as online workers unite").

Such transparency is much-needed. Crowd-working still feels like an informal occupation: a way for people with a bit of spare time to earn pin money. But it is increasingly becoming embedded in the mainstream economy: a fifth of the people who fulfil Mechanical Turk requests say they need their earnings to make ends meet. And tomorrow's platforms may offer more complex tasks to more specialist workers. There is excited talk of a "reputational economy", in which your ratings will determine your ability to offer and attract work.

Marketplaces that efficiently match those with time (or skills) to those with money are to be welcomed. If workers are not to be exploited, and bosses are not to be smeared, however, we will need to think harder about how such exchanges can be made fair and transparent. Time to take a keener interest in the welfare of those who work for us - no matter how trivial their work may seem.

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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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 of violence to more than 100.

Twin explosions that struck at a bird market in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah, site of the shrine of a revered figure in Shiite Islam, killed at least 16 people and wounded 43 others, security and medical officials said.

The two car bombs were set off just after 9:00 am in the market, which is typically packed with people on a Friday.

Militants have targeted Baghdad's crowded bird markets in the past.

On February 1, 2008 -- also a Friday -- 100 people were killed by two explosions in such markets in central and east Baghdad.

The explosives were strapped to two mentally-impaired women and then triggered by remote control in coordinated blasts, a top Iraqi security official said at the time.

And in the predominantly-Shiite Iraqi province of Babil on Friday, two car bombs in the town of Shomali, south of Baghdad, killed 13 people and wounded 26 others, according to security and medical officials.

The first explosion went off on the town's outskirts, while the second was detonated in a market. Among the casualties were women and children, the medics said.

Sunni militants, including Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq, often target Shiite neighbourhoods with deadly attacks in a bid to push the country back to the sectarian bloodshed that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

The violence is the latest in a spike in unrest in Iraq, which has been struck by waves of car bombs and suicide attacks in recent weeks amid a political crisis and weeks of rallies in Sunni-majority areas calling for the ouster of Shiite prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A total of 102 people have been killed in violence nationwide in the past week, and January was the deadliest month in Iraq since September according to an AFP tally.

Among the attacks since Saturday was a string of three suicide bombings in as many days.

- AFP/xq

Read More..

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 Dictate for
Mac.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 promises 15 percent better out-of-the box accuracy than its predecessor, as well as faster mistake correction, among other improvements. Also, if you like to capture your spontaneous fits of genius using a digital voice recorder or iPhone,
iPad, or
iPod Touch, the software will transcribe the recorded audio files when you connect to your Mac.

Normally, Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 would cost you $199.99, but you have the chance to get it for zero, nada, bupkis. How do you go about doing that? There are a few rules from our department of people who make rules, so please read carefully.

• Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the Join CNET link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.


• Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful, it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.


• Leave only one comment. You may enter for this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.
  


• The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) copy of Nuance Dragon Dictate for Mac 3, with a retail value of $199.99.


• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the sweepstakes. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.


• Entries can be submitted until Monday, February 11, at 12 p.m. ET.

And here's the disclaimer that our legal department said we had to include (sorry for the caps, but rules are rules):

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OLD OR AGE OF MAJORITY, WHICHEVER IS OLDER IN YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCE AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, February 11, 2013. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

Read More..

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 the orbits of many communications satellites, making it the closest flyby on record. (Read about one of the largest asteroids to fly by Earth.)

"This is indeed a remarkably close approach for an asteroid this size," said Paul Chodas, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Earth Object (NEO) program office in Pasadena, California.

"We estimate that an asteroid of this size passes this close to the Earth only once every few decades."

The giant rock—half a football field wide—was first spotted by observers at the La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain a year ago, soon after it had just finished making a much more distant pass of the Earth at 2.6 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away.

This time around however, on February15 at 2:24 pm EST, the asteroid will be passing uncomfortably close—ten times closer than the orbit of the moon—flying over the eastern Indian Ocean near Sumatra (map). (Watch: "Moon 101.")

Future Impact?

Chodas and his team have been keeping a close eye on the cosmic intruder, and orbital calculations of its trajectory show that there is no chance for impact.

But the researchers have not yet ruled out future chances of a collision. This is because asteroids of this size are too faint to be detected until they come quite close to the Earth, said Chodas.

"There is still a tiny chance that it might hit us on some future passage by the Earth; for example there is [a] 1-in-200,000 chance that it could hit us in the year 2080," he said.

"But even that tiny chance will probably go away within the week, as the asteroid's orbit gets tracked with greater and greater accuracy and we can eliminate that possibility."

Earth collision with an object of this size is expected to occur every 1,200 years on average, said Donald Yeomans, NEO program manager, at a NASA news conference this week.

DA14 has been getting closer and closer to Earth for quite a while—but this is the asteroid's closest approach in the past hundred years. And it probably won't get this close again for at least another century, added Yeomans.

While no Earth impact is possible next week, DA14 will pass 5,000 miles inside the ring of orbiting geosynchronous weather and communications satellites; so all eyes are watching the space rock's exact trajectory. (Learn about the history of satellites.)

"It's highly unlikely they will be threatened, but NASA is working with satellite providers, making them aware of the asteroid's pass," said Yeomans.

Packing a Punch

Experts say an impact from an object this size would have the explosive power of a few megatons of TNT, causing localized destruction—similar to what occurred in Siberia in 1908.

In what's known as the "Tunguska event," an asteroid is thought to have created an airburst explosion which flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of a remote forested region in what is now northern Russia (map).

In comparison, an impact from an asteroid with a diameter of about half a mile (one kilometer) could temporarily change global climate and kill millions of people if it hit a populated area.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that while small objects like DA14 could hit Earth once a millennia or so, the largest and most destructive impacts have already been catalogued.

"Objects of the size that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs have all been discovered," said Spahr. (Learn about what really happened to the dinosaurs.)

A survey of nearly 9,500 near-Earth objects half a mile (one kilometer) in diameter is nearly complete. Asteroid hunters expect to complete nearly half of a survey of asteroids several hundred feet in diameter in the coming years.

"With the existing assets we have, discovering asteroids rapidly and routinely, I continue to expect the world to be safe from impacts in the future," added Spahr.

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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 the loose after finding his truck burning around 12:45 p.m. local time.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said the authorities can't say for certain he's not in the area. More than half of the 400 homes in the area have been searched by police, who are traveling in two-man teams. Bachman urged people in the area to not answer the door, unless you know the person or law enforcement in uniform.

After discovering Dorner's burning truck near a Bear Mountain ski resort, police discovered tracks in the snow leading away from the vehicle. The truck has been taken to the San Bernardino County Sheriffs' crime lab.

Read More About Chris Dorner's Allegations Against the LAPD

Bachman would not comment on Dorner's motive for leaving the car or its contents, citing the ongoing investigation. Police are no aware of Dorner having any ties to others in the area.

Christopher Dorner: Ex-Cop Wanted in Killing Spree Watch Video

Engaged California Couple Found Dead in Car Watch Video

She added that the search in the area would continue as long as the weather cooperates. However, a snowstorm was forecast for the area. About three choppers were being used overnight, but weather conditions were deteriorating, according to Bachman.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, is suspected of killing one police officer and injured two others Thursday morning in Riverside, Calif. He was also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday. And he allegedly released an angry "manifesto" airing grievances against police and warning of coming violence toward cops.

In the manifesto Dorner published online, he threatened at least 12 people by name, along with their families.
"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will leave to deadly consequences for you and your family," Dorner wrote in his manifesto.

One passage from the manifesto read, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," it read. "I'm terminating yours."

Hours after the extensive manhunt dragged police to Big Bear Lake, CNN's Anderson Cooper said Dorner had sent him a package at his New York office that arrived on Feb. 1, though Cooper said he never knew about the package until Thursday. It contained a DVD of court testimony, with a Post-It note signed by Dorner claiming, "I never lied! Here is my vindication."

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

It also contained a keepsake coin bearing the name of former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton that came wrapped in duct tape, Cooper said. The duct tape bore the note, "Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton."

Bratton told Cooper on his program, "Anderson Cooper 360," that he believed he gave Dorner the coin as he was headed overseas for the Navy, Bratton's practice when officers got deployed abroad. Though a picture has surfaced of Bratton, in uniform, and Dorner, in fatigues, shaking hands, Bratton told Cooper he didn't recall Dorner or the meeting.

Read More..

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 data

Universal 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 resistance

Choking China: The struggle to clear Beijing's air

As pollution levels return to normal in China's capital after a record-breaking month of smog, what can be done to banish the smog?

Genes mix across borders more easily than folk tales

Analysing variations in folk tales using genetic techniques shows that people swap genes more readily than stories, giving clues to how cultures evolve

Sleep and dreaming: Slumber at the flick of a switch

Wouldn't it be wonderful to pack a good night's sleep into fewer hours? Technology has the answer - and it could treat depression and even extend our lives too

Closest Earth-like planet may be 13 light years away

A habitable exoplanet should be near enough for future telescopes to probe its atmosphere for signs of life

Lifelogging captures a real picture of your health

How can lifelogging - wearing a camera round your neck to record your every move - reveal what's healthy and unhealthy in the way we live?

Musical brains smash audio algorithm limits

The mystery of how our brains perceive sound has deepened, now that musicians have broken a limit on sound perception imposed by the Fourier transform

Magnitude 8 earthquake strikes Solomon Islands

A major earthquake has caused a small tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, killing at least five people

Nuclear knock-backs on UK's new reactors and old waste

Plans to build new reactors in the UK are stalling as yet another company pulls out, and there is still nowhere to store nuclear waste permanently

Amateur astronomer helps Hubble snap galactic monster

An amateur astronomer combined his pictures with images from the Hubble archive to reveal the true nature of galactic oddball M106

Nightmare images show how lack of sleep kills

Fatigue has been blamed for some of worst human-made disasters of recent decades. Find out more in our image gallery

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