Revisit issue of investigation into police brutality after proceedings end: Indranee

SINGAPORE: Issues relating to the investigation of claims of police brutality by former SMRT bus drivers will be dealt with once relevant proceedings are over.

Senior Minister of State for Law, Indranee Rajah, said this in Parliament on Monday.

She was responding to a question by Non-Constituency Member of Parliament, Yee Jenn Jong.

Mr Yee asked whether the attempted retention and confiscation of a laptop, desktop computer and mobile phone belonging to a film maker was in accordance with requirements set out in the Criminal Procedure Code.

He also questioned what the legal basis is for the attempted confiscation.

Ms Indranee said the allegations of police brutality against the former SMRT drivers, which were posted on the website "Lianain Films" on 28 January, are serious allegations.

They are currently being investigated by the Police Internal Affairs Office.

She said notwithstanding these allegations, the drivers have indicated through their counsel that they intend to plead guilty to the criminal charges preferred against them.

Ms Indranee added that it is best that the issue is dealt with after all the relevant proceedings are over.

- CNA/ck

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What mattered as MWC begins

Mobile World Congress 2013 officially kicks off today in sunny Spain, but a whole bunch of goodies were unveiled yesterday by the likes of Samsung, Huawei, HP and Mozilla.

Samsung got the fiesta off to a flying start by lifting the lid on the Galaxy Note 8, an
Android tablet to rival Apple's iPad mini. It'll launch with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean on board and proudly packs a 1.6GHz quad-core chip with 2GB of RAM.

With an SD card slot, a home button, and S-Pen stylus support, the Note 8 offers a level of functionality the iPad can't match, but it's too early to say whether that will guarantee it fame and glory. Expect this tiny
tablet to appear worldwide sometime in the second quarter of 2013.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 adds new features to its 8-inch design

Tech journalists woke from their early afternoon siesta to discover that Huawei had decided to test their post-nap wits by announcing its only device of the trade show before its scheduled press conference. The Ascend P2 is a quad-core phone with a Full HD 4.3-inch display. Huawei claims it's speedier than the iPhone 5 and packs a better battery than the Samsung Galaxy S3.

The P2 runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will only be available online in the US, rather than through carriers, but is expected to go on sale more widely in Europe. It should be available in the middle of 2013 for around 399 euros or $525. With this kind of high-end pricing, it looks as though Huawei is attempting to try and take on the Android big guns. It's even promised another phone in the summer that will be "much more competitive and very disruptive". Menacing.

Huawei's Ascend P2 shows off its Android styling in hands-on video

The Alcatel One Touch Fire is the first device to ignite with
Firefox OS on board. The chunky 3.5-inch phone comes splattered in Firefox's signature orange and is likely aimed at the budget end of the smartphone market, with only a single-core 1GHz processor and a 3.2-megapixel camera on board. Expect to see this flame-colored phone out and about in the wild no earlier than June.

Alcatel has a Firefox OS phone!

In the spirit of 'if at first you don't succeed...' HP announced it was trying its hand once more in the consumer tablet market, this time picking Android as its OS of choice. The Slate 7 is a 7-inch Google Nexus 7 challenger running 4.1 Jelly Bean. It's priced at a keen $169.

HP also announced that it will be releasing a series of Android smartphones in the near future.

Don't forget we're out in Barcelona all week, bringing you previews, hands-on photos and videos, not to mention live blogs from all the major press conferences. Nokia has jump-started day two already with an early press conference, and you can join us later today at 4.30 a.m. PT (1.30 p.m. local time) to discover what Asus' 'Metallic Miracle' teaser trailer was all about, and at 7 a.m. PT (4 p.m. local time) to find out what ZTE is launching.

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Picture Archive: Dorothy Lamour and Jiggs, Circa 1938

Dorothy Lamour, most famous for her Road to ... series of movies with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, never won an Oscar. In her 50-plus-year career as an actress, she never even got nominated.

Neither did Jiggs the chimpanzee, pictured here with Lamour on the set of Her Jungle Love in a photo published in the 1938 National Geographic story "Monkey Folk."

No animal has ever been nominated for an Oscar. According to Academy Award rules, only actors and actresses are eligible.

Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier from last year's best picture winner, The Artist, didn't rate a nod. The equines that portrayed Seabiscuit and War Horse, movies that were best picture contenders in their respective years, were also snubbed.

Even the seven piglets that played Babe, the eponymous star of the best picture nominee in 1998, didn't rate. And the outlook seems to be worsening for the animal kingdom's odds of ever getting its paws on that golden statuette.

This year, two movies nominated in the best picture category had creatures that were storyline drivers with significant on-screen time. Neither Beasts of the Southern Wild (which featured extinct aurochs) or Life of Pi (which featured a CGI Bengal tiger named Richard Parker) used real animals.

An Oscar's not the only way for animals to get ahead, though. Two years after this photo was published, the American Humane Association's Los Angeles Film & TV Unit was established to monitor and protect animals working on show business sets. The group's creation was spurred by the death of a horse during the filming of 1939's Jessie James.

Today, it's still the only organization that stamps "No Animals Were Harmed" onto a movie's closing credits.

Editor's note: This is part of a series of pieces that looks at the news through the lens of the National Geographic photo archives.

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Oscars 2013: 'Argo' Wins Best Picture

"Argo" took home the top prize as best picture at the Oscars Sunday night, with first lady Michelle Obama announcing the winner from the White House.

"You directed a hell of a film," co-producer Grant Heslov told director and fellow producer Ben Affleck. "I couldn't be more proud of the film and more proud of our director."

Affleck was snubbed in the directing category but humbly accepted the best picture Oscar as one of the three producers on the film. George Clooney was the third.

Affleck thanked Steven Spielberg and the other best picture nominees and his wife Jennifer Garner for "working on our marriage."

"It's good, it's work," he said, adding, "but there's no one I'd rather work with."

For Full List of Winners

Acknowledging his last Oscar win, as a screenwriter for "Good Will Hunting," Affleck said, "I was really just a kid. I never thought I would be back here."

In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for best actor, being the first actor to three-peat in that category. As he accepted the award from Hollywood's greatest actress, Meryl Streep, he joked, "I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher. ... Meryl was Stephen's first choice for Lincoln."

He also thanked his wife, Rebecca Miller, for "living with some very strange men," with each new role that he takes on.

"She's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them," he said.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Daniel Day-Lewis Gets Laughs With Oscars Speech Watch Video

Jennifer Lawrence won the award for best actress. She tripped on the stairs on her way to accepting her award but picked herself up and made her way to the stage, earning a standing ovation.

"You're just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's embarrassing," she said, before rattling off a list of thank-yous and leaving the stage looking slightly stunned.

Watch Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar Tumble

"Life of Pi," which had a total of 11 nominations, was another big winner of the night. Director Ang Lee took home the Oscar for best director over Steven Spielberg and David O. Russell.

"Thank you, movie god," Lee said, accepting his award.

As expected, the film took home the first technical awards of the night for cinematography and visual effects. "Life of Pi" also won for best original score.

The first big acting awards of the night went to Christoph Waltz and Anne Hathaway in the supporting actor categories.

In one of the biggest tossups, Waltz claimed the award for supporting actor for his role in "Django Unchained." It was his second Oscar for a Quentin Tarantino film; his first was for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."

PHOTOS: Stars on the Red Carpet

As expected, Hathaway took home the award for best supporting actress for her role as Fantine in "Les Miserables."

"It came true," she said, launching into a breathy speech, in which she thanked the cast and crew, her team and her husband. "The greatest moment of my life was when you walked into it," she said.

Tarantino won the Oscar for best original screenplay for his slave revenge western "Django Unchained." He thanked his cast.

"I have to cast the right people," he said. "And boy this time did I do it."

Chris Terrio won the award for best adapted screenplay for "Argo," which also won for film editing.

For only the sixth time in Academy history, there was a tie at the Oscars. "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall" tied for sound editing.

See Other Ties in Academy History

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Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions

WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects never lose their good-as-new lustre, their very nature means there is still uncertainty about whether we actually own them in the first place, making it tricky to set up a second-hand market. Now an Amazon patent for a system to support reselling digital purchases could change that.

Amazon's move comes after last year's European Union ruling that software vendors cannot stop customers from reselling their products. But without technical support, the ruling has had no impact. In Amazon's system, customers will keep their digital purchases – such as e-books or music – in a personal data store in the cloud that only they can access, allowing them to stream or download the content.

This part is like any cloud-based digital locker except that the customer can resell previous purchases by passing the access rights to another person. Once the transaction is complete, the seller will lose access to the content. Any system for reselling an e-book, for example, would have to ensure that it is not duplicated in the transaction. That means deleting any copies the seller may have lying around on hard drives, e-book readers, and other cloud services, since that would violate copyright.

Amazon may be the biggest company to consider a second-hand market, but it is not the first. ReDigi, based in Boston, has been running a resale market for digital goods since 2011. After downloading an app, users can buy a song on ReDigi for as little as 49 cents that would costs 99 cents new on iTunes.

When users want to sell an item, they upload it to ReDigi's servers via a mechanism that ensures no copy is made during the transfer. Software checks that the seller does not retain a copy. Once transferred, the item can be bought and downloaded by another customer. ReDigi is set to launch in Europe in a few months.

Digital items on ReDigi are cheaper because they are one-offs. If your hard drive crashes and you lose your iTunes collection you can download it again. But you can only download an item from ReDigi once – there is no other copy. That is the trade-off that makes a second-hand digital market work: the risk justifies the price. The idea has ruffled a few feathers – last year EMI sued ReDigi for infringement of copyright. A judge denied the claim, but the case continues.

Used digital goods can also come with added charm. ReDigi tracks the history of the items traded so when you buy something, you can see who has owned it and when. ReDigi's second-hand marketplace has grown into a social network. According to ReDigi founder John Ossenmacher, customers like seeing who has previously listened to a song. "It's got soul like an old guitar," he says. "We've introduced this whole feeling of connectedness."

It could be good for business too if the original vendors, such as iTunes, were to support resale and take a cut of the resell price. Nevertheless, Amazon's move bucks the industry trend. Microsoft's new Xbox, for example, is expected not to work with second-hand games.

But the market could change rapidly now that Amazon's weight is behind this, says Ossenmacher. "The industry is waking up."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Old MP3, one careful owner"

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.

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Several dead in Vietnam house explosions

HANOI: Several people were killed when twin blasts tore through a residential street and destroyed three houses in south Vietnam early Sunday, police said, with reports putting the death toll at around 10.

"We have been informed of two explosions this morning that killed about ten people... but we need to check the exact number of the victims," a local policeman told AFP following the blasts, which left many more victims trapped in rubble, according to reports.

The policeman said authorities were investigating the cause of the explosions in a district of the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City, adding that they were believed to have been accidental.

State mouthpiece Tuoi Tre newspaper reported on its website that a family of seven was among those killed and many people remained trapped in the rubble.

It said local people heard two large explosions within five minutes of each other -- causing shockwaves that rattled homes up to several hundred metres away. They discovered three homes ablaze and partially destroyed.

Hundreds of firefighters on more than a dozen fire trucks rushed to the scene and were leading rescue efforts, the newspaper said.

- AFP/fa

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Nokia at MWC 2013: Join us Sunday (live blog)

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, last year.

(Credit:
Roger Cheng/CNET)

BARCELONA, Spain--Will Nokia unleash another Lumia smartphone?

Nokia kicks off the first official day of Mobile World Congress with its press conference, and you can get all the news right here.

Rather than a high-end superphone, Nokia is expected to unveil a line of more budget-friendly phones in a bid to go after the mass market. That could mean a lower-end Lumia device, as well phones from its Asha line of ultra-low-end phones.

CNET UK's Luke Westaway, photographer Sarah Tew, and I will be bringing you all the details, photos, and commentary from the event. The event kicks off at 11:30 p.m. PT on Sunday, or 8:30 a.m. Monday in local Barcelona time.

You can tune into the live blog here:

Nokia's Mobile World Congress press conference

Nokia, like many cellphone makers, is on the road to recovery, and it's still unclear where the company is headed. Its line of Lumia smartphones has won critical praise, but it doesn't yet have a blockbuster hit like Apple's iPhone or the Galaxy S from Samsung.

Still, the company has made steady progress expanding its distribution. In the U.S., it just got back into the game with Verizon with the Lumia 620, and CEO Stephen Elop has hinted at a potential flagship down the line.

We'll see if Nokia can keep up its momentum with whatever new products it launches tomorrow.

As usual, we'll be using ScribbleLive to bring you live text and photos, blow by blow. We'll start the live blog about 15 minutes before Nokia officially kicks off its event.

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Las Vegas Strip Shooting Suspect ID'd

Las Vegas police identified a suspect today in a shooting on the strip that caused a Maserati to hit a taxi and burst into flames, killing three people.

Ammar Harris, 26, has been named a suspect in the Thursday skirmish that killed three people, including rapper Kenny Clutch.

The altercation between Harris and Clutch, 27, whose legal name was Kenneth Cherry Jr., is believed to have originated in the valet area of a Las Vegas hotel, police said.

Police said Harris fired several rounds into a Maserati that was being driven by Cherry as both vehicles continued northbound on glitzy Las Vegas Boulevard.

The rapper's expensive sports car careened out of control after he was shot, slamming into several cars, including a taxi. The impact caused the cab to burst into flames, killing the driver, Michael Boldon and a female passenger. Witnesses said it looked like the car exploded.

"He was a number one guy," Carolyn Jean Trimble, Boldon's sister, told ABC News.

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"I looked out my window and I could see one vehicle down here on the corner of the intersection totally engulfed in flames," witness John Lamb told ABC News.

Boldon, 62, and his passenger, who has not yet been identified, were both killed, as was Clutch.

Timble said her brother loved driving his taxi around Vegas.

"He came to live with me in Las Vegas last year to help take care of our mother, and the first day he got here he said, 'I have to get a job.' The second day, I came home from work, and he said he got a job," she recalled.

"He says, 'You'll never guess what it is,' and I said, 'what,' and he said, 'taxi cab driver,' and we both fell out laughing," Trimble said. "He loved that job. He never complained. He'd come home and tell me stories about what happened, who he picked up."

Boldon was a single father who raised a 36-year-old son and was a new grandfather. His grandson was named after him, Trimble said.

"Of all the people to take from this earth," she said. "But I guess the Lord needed him."

A passenger in the Maserati was hit and sustained only a minor injury to his arm. Clutch died at University Medical Center.

His father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., expressed his grief for the loss of his son while speaking with ABC News.

"This is something you never really, really ever want to experience as a parent, to lose a child before you go," he said.

Harris is described as 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Las Vegas Metro Police Department's homicide division.

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.

A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).

But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.

The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.

To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.

Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.

It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.

William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"

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.

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Hollande wants proper labels on meat meals

PARIS: France's president said Saturday he wanted to see proper labelling of meat in ready-made meals to avert a repeat of the scandal over horsemeat being passed off as beef.

"I want there to eventually be mandatory labels on the meat contained in prepared meals," Francois Hollande said while visiting an agricultural show in Paris.

"Until then, I will support... all initiatives for voluntary labelling" so that "consumers know the origin of the products they are consuming, especially meat."

A vast food scandal erupted in Europe in January after horsemeat was initially found in so-called beef ready-made meals and burgers in Britain and Ireland. It has since spread as far as Hong Kong.

French firm Spanghero has been at the heart of the scandal after it allegedly passed off 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef, with the product eventually finding its way into 4.5 million "beef" products sold across Europe.

-AFP/fl

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