Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab.

Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues injected zebrafish with the hoxd13 gene from a mouse. The protein that the gene codes for controls the development of autopods, a precursor to hands, feet and paws.

Zebrafish naturally carry hoxd13 but produce less of the protein than tetrapods - all four-limbed vertebrates and birds - do. Casares and his colleagues hoped that by injecting extra copies of the gene into the zebrafish embryos, some of their cells would make more of the protein.

One full day later, all of those fish whose cells had taken up the gene began to develop autopods instead of fins. They carried on growing for four days but then died (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015).

"Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," says Casares. He speculates that hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of tetrapods began expressing more hoxd13 for some reason and that this could have allowed them to evolve autopods.

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Obama calls for solidarity after school massacre

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Saturday called for Americans to "come together" to prevent tragedies like the school massacre that killed 20 young children and six adults, one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

"This weekend, Michelle and I are doing what I know every parent is doing -- holding our children as close as we can and reminding them how much we love them," said Obama, father of Sasha, 10, and Malia, 14.

"There are families in Connecticut who can't do that today. And they need all of us now," he added, in his weekly address.

Twenty-seven people, including the shooter, were killed on Friday morning at an elementary school in Connecticut. US media reported that a 28th victim, found at a residence in the town, was the shooter's mother.

"While nothing can take the place of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need -- to remind them that we are there for them; that we are praying for them; and that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their own memories, but also in their community, and their country," he continued.

"Every parent in America has a heart heavy with hurt," Obama said. On Friday, he fought tears in an emotional address about the tragic incident.

"We grieve for the families of those we lost. And we keep in our prayers the parents of those who survived. Because as blessed as they are to have their children home, they know that their child's innocence has been torn away far too early," the president said.

Obama said the tragedy was all too familiar, after similar deadly shootings at a shopping mall in Oregon, at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and at a movie theatre in Colorado earlier this year.

"Any of these neighbourhoods could be our own. So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this. Regardless of the politics," the president said, echoing his message from the day before.

Obama did not give details, but some US politicians called for a serious look at gun control laws, a subject which Obama, re-elected on November 6, did not tackle strongly in his first term.

- AFP/xq

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Do I really need insurance for my smartphone?

You may have only paid $200 for your latest smartphone, but if you had to replace that device before you are eligible for a subsidy from your carrier it cost your more than $600. Is it worth it to get device insurance?

That's the question I answer this time in Ask Maggie. I also offer some advice to an Apple iPhone fan who wants to know if he should wait for the next iPhone rumored to be out in June or July.

To buy insurance or live dangerously without?

Dear Maggie,
I am getting my son an
iPhone 5 for Christmas. I was wondering if I should also consider getting an insurance policy for the phone. Is it a good idea or a waste of money? Would I need to get Apple Care in addition to an insurance plan? And do you think I should get the insurance from a carrier or through a third party company?

Thanks,
Karen

Dear Karen,
The problem with buying any kind of insurance is that you simply don't know what will happen in the future. If your son's new iPhone is lost, stolen or damaged in the first few months of owning it, then it's a terrific bargain. But if he goes two years with not so much as a scratch on his precious new gadget, it's a waste of money.

Some people would rather save the money they'd spend on the insurance premiums and deductible, and hope nothing bad happens to their gadget. While others would prefer to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing their device can be replaced right away without having to pay full price for a new device.

The first thing you need to figure out is how much insurance will cost you and what it will cover. As you alluded to in your question, there are several options for purchasing smartphone and other gadget insurance. Wireless operators offer insurance plans as do third party companies. There are also extended warranty plans from device makers like Apple or from retailers like Best Buy, that typically cover mechanical defects to the device and may on some occasions cover some accidental damage coverage. But these programs typically do not cover you for a lost or stolen device.

In general, insurance plans will offer more coverage than an extended warranty. Here are a few things that many insurance policies will likely cover:

• Accidental damage (including shattered screens and liquid damage)
• Loss
• Theft or burglary
• Mechanical breakdown or malfunction beyond the manufacturer warranty

Some insurance policies may also cover things like credit monitoring as well as lock, wipe and locate services if your device is lost or stolen.

Every insurance policy will also include a fee or premium. And they all have a deductible. The fees and deductibles often depend on what kind of device you are insuring. Be aware that many policies charge higher premiums and have higher deductibles for the Apple iPhone as compared to other smartphones.

So make sure you double check the policy to see what the fees and deductibles are. Before you sign up for any insurance, you should check the specifics and fine print to see what is and is not covered.

To get you started on your search, here's a little information about a few options.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless offer insurance for the iPhone. But Sprint, which offers an insurance plan for other smartphones, does not offer a policy for the iPhone. T-Mobile, which doesn't offer the iPhone on its network, also does not have a policy that would cover the iPhone.

There are also insurance policies from third party companies you may want to consider. One such company is called ProtectYourBubble.com. It offers insurance for the iPhone as well as other gadgets. This company offers a 10 percent discount for additional policies you have either on other iPhones or on other gadgets.

Here's a quick look at the offers:

AT&T

Premium: $6.99 per month

Deductible: $199

Verizon Wireless

Premium: $9.99 per month

Deductible: $169 for 8GB, 16GB
iPhone 4, 16GB
iPhone 4S and, 8GB, 16GB iPhone 5 and $199 for 32GB iPhone 4 and 32GB, 64GB iPhone 4S and 32GB, 64GB iPhone 5

Protect Your Bubble

Premium: $7.99 per month

Deductible: $120 (Other smartphones have a deductible of $100.)

Which insurance plan is better? As you can see from the information listed above, Verizon has the most expensive insurance plan. Two years of premiums, plus the deductible will set you back $410. AT&T's premiums and deductible are $368 for the iPhone. And Protect Your Bubble's total comes to $312.

Are any of these policies really worth the cost? Again, it's hard to answer this question since it really depends on how likely it is that you'll need the insurance versus how much risk you're willing to live with if you don't get any insurance.

Remember that if you have to replace the device before your son is eligible for a new contract, it will cost you between $649 to $849 to replace his iPhone with a new iPhone 5 depending on the model you select. You may be able to get a used or refurbished iPhone for a bit less, but iPhones hold their value pretty well, so you will likely still end up paying several hundred dollars to get the same device.

Personally, I am a bit of a cheapskate. And I'm willing to take the risk of something happening to my device. I have never had insurance on any of my smartphones. And (knock on wood) I have never had a cracked screen or a device damaged by water or any other liquid. My iPhone 3G was stolen out of my backpack when I was playing in a flag football game a few years ago, but I was eligible for an upgrade from my carrier, so I only ended up paying $200 for a new phone anyway.

That said, I may soon be one of the few people who does not get insurance for my smartphone. According to Stephen Ebbett of Protect Your Bubble, 45 percent of smartphone subscribers have insurance for their devices. And he said that his company is seeing more and more people sign up for coverage.

"Our sales are growing week on week," he said. "We've been very encouraged by people recognizing the value of their smartphone in their lives. It's not just the cash value of their devices, but the fact that they really can't live without their smartphone for a week."

What about Apple Care?

Apple's AppleCare+ program costs $99 and extends the warranty of the iPhone for another year. The plan covers all repair coverage and technical support. And it also covers up to two incidents of accidental damage, each with an additional cost of $49.

While Apple Care+ is considerably less expensive than the insurance plans, you must remember that it is essentially an extended warranty. And it does not cover you if the device is lost or stolen. For iPhone users, this is a particularly important distinction since iPhone thefts are on the rise. The New York City Police Department said earlier this year that iPhone and iPad thefts went up 40 percent between January and the end of September.

Why? Compared to other gadgets, iPhones have high resale values, so they are often a target for thieves.

Do you need Apple Care+ in addition to insurance? The short answer to that question is no. The insurance policy for the phone will likely cover the same types of technical and accidental damage that the Apple Care+ service offers. The only thing you may lose by forgoing Apple Care+ is online and telephone technical support from Apple. But you should still be able to get some tech support from the Genius bar at your local Apple store. And your son's iPhone will be covered under the regular warranty for the first year that he owns it.

I hope this advice was helpful. And good luck! Happy holidays!

Should I wait for the next iPhone?

Dear Maggie,
I am in need of a new phone (currently using Blackberry Bold 9930 from Sprint) and would like to get the new iPhone. Here is the issue - as a guy who likes to have all the latest and greatest tech I'm rather scared to buy the iPhone 5 with all the "iPhone 5S" rumors that just started. I know it is pretty much impossible to stay up to date with every piece of technology (especially phones) . But if I am going to upgrade I would at least like the newest iteration. So what do you think about these rumors? Any chance that these will be true (it seems nearly every Apple rumor comes true these days)? Should I wait until June/July or just go ahead and get the iPhone 5 that is available now? Lots of questions I know, but these are confusing times.

Thanks in advance,
Jordan

Dear Jordan,
As you mentioned in your question, it is almost impossible to stay up to date with every piece of technology. So my recommendation to you is to not even try to play that game. The soonest we'd likely see an iPhone 5S, if it even exists, is June. That's is still half a year away. That's a long time in the fast-paced smartphone market.

Earlier this month, French Web site Nowhereelse.fr spotted alleged pictures of the next iPhone, commonly referred to as the iPhone 5S, on a forum run by iPhone5parts.net.

(Credit:
Screenshot taken by Roger Cheng/CNET)

It sounds like you need a new smartphone now. So I'd recommend that you stop waiting and purchase a phone that you like right now. If a new iPhone comes out in six months, you could always sell it and still make bake a good portion of your money, which you could put toward a new iPhone.

Good luck with your decision.

Ask Maggie is an advice column that answers readers' wireless and broadband questions. The column now appears twice a week on CNET offering readers a double dosage of Ask Maggie's advice. If you have a question, I'd love to hear from you. Please send me an e-mail at maggie dot reardon at cbs dot com. And please put "Ask Maggie" in the subject header. You can also follow me on Facebook on my Ask Maggie page.

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Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.

A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

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School Shooting: Officials Seek Details on Gunman

The FBI is in at least three states interviewing relatives and friends of the elementary school gunman who killed 20 children, seven adults and himself, trying to put together a better picture of the shooter and uncover any possible explanation for the massacre, ABC News has learned.

The authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview relatives of Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, who was one of Lanza's shooting victims.

The victims died Friday when Lanza invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and sprayed staff and students with bullets, officials said. Lanza also was found dead in the school.

Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died later in a hospital.

Six adults also were slain, bringing the total to 26. Among them was the school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, multiple sources told ABC News. Another adult victim was teacher Vicki Soto, her cousin confirmed.

In addition to the casualties at the school, Lanza's mother, Nancy Lanza, was killed in her home, federal and state sources told ABC News.

According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.

READ: Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Lanza then drove to the elementary school and continued his rampage, authorities said.

Newtown Teacher Kept 1st Graders Calm During Massacre Watch Video

Newtown School Shooting: What to Tell Your Kids Watch Video

It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The rifle was found in his car.

"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dan Malloy said at a news conference Friday evening.

CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.

In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24. Identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the shooting scene, federal sources told ABC News.

Ryan Lanza soon took to Facebook to say he was alive and not responsible for the shooting. He later was questioned by police.

During the rampage, first-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.

"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."

She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas. ... I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."

A tearful President Obama said Friday that there was "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."

The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were "beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10."

As he continued with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye. He has ordered flags flown as half staff.

It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.

Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.

The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.

The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said.

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The end of race history? Not yet

Osagie K. Obasogie, contributor

(Image: Tom Pilston/Panos)

Two books illuminate how ideas of a post-racial world conflict with ongoing use of race in science

HAVE we gone beyond race? Many argue society has now overcome centuries of strife to become "post-racial" - a moment that law professor Sumi Cho of DePaul University in Chicago refers to as "the end of race history".

Two seemingly disparate developments have been used to lend support to this claim. In politics, Barack Obama's 2008 election as the first racial minority-member to become US president has been lauded as a racially transcendent moment. In science, the completion of the Human Genome Project's first draft in June 2000 offered seemingly definitive evidence that race is not real. As geneticist Craig Venter noted at the HGP announcement, "the concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis".

Yet this supposed new era of race relations met a backlash on two fronts. The political dimension has been widely publicised; President Obama's first term has been distinguished by elements of hatred and disrespect unquestionably coloured by race.

Another, less well-known dimension has roots within the scientific community. Despite pronouncements that race is genetically meaningless, some researchers insist that there are natural divisions between human groups that align with social categories of race. They argue that taking account of biological differences between racial groups can lead to beneficial innovations such as better understandings of individual ancestry, race-specific therapies, and new tools that can help law-enforcement fight crime.

But science is not on the side of these scientists. It has been widely documented, for example, that the presumption of a biological basis for social categories of race can shape research methods as well as the interpretation of results. Such findings can lead to a troubling re-emergence of biological race in mainstream science that, despite good intentions, is not unlike past versions used to further racial subordination.

Two recent books by legal scholars address these issues. Jonathan Kahn's Race in a Bottle provides a stunning case study of BiDil, the first drug to receive approval by the US Food and Drug Administration as a race-specific therapy. It was designed to treat African-Americans suffering from heart failure - based mainly on a mistaken belief that there are meaningful disparities in heart failure outcomes between blacks and whites caused by biological differences. Although BiDil was initially created as a race-neutral drug, Kahn offers a compelling account of the many influences that turned what is in essence a combination therapy of two widely available generic treatments into a pill "for black people only".

With a meticulous yet accessible and entertaining narrative, Kahn outlines the broader legal and political landscapes that not only allowed BiDil to get as far as it did, but also actively provided an incentive for this approach as the "dream" of personalised medicine marches on. He then shows how an inflexible response from public agencies to these markets and innovations in a genomic age can effectively recreate the notion of biological race.

Dorothy Roberts's Fatal Invention, now out in paperback, extends this insight to examine how the re-emergence of biological race is having a broader impact - not only on innovations such as genetic ancestry-testing and racialised aspects of DNA forensics, but also on how we think about basic notions of racial difference. Advocates of biological race argue that today's use of race in biomedicine is different from past usages within science that supported racism, eugenics and questionable research practices.

Yet Roberts brilliantly identifies the continuity of thought on biological race that links past, present and, perhaps, future. She points out that the continued acceptance of biological race in science and medicine works, for example, to obscure social and environmental causes of the very disparities thought to necessitate race-specific interventions. This reframes minorities' poor health outcomes as a function of their "bad genes" rather than the discriminatory social practices that these groups endure. By identifying this historical thread, Fatal Invention offers remarkable insight into how persistent claims of racial difference as biological difference retain residual notions of racial hierarchy as poisonous today as at any time before.

Taken together, Race in a Bottle and Fatal Invention tackle one of the most important concerns pertaining to race facing our society today. How do we make sense of the re-emergence of biological race amid assertions that race no longer matters? There are no better scholars than Kahn and Roberts to help us think through these issues. The growing acceptance of post-racialism, premature as it may be, is forcing a new conversation on how race is no longer merely a social or political issue, but is becoming a distinctively biopolitical concern that requires us to bring our commitments to racial justice to science. Kahn and Roberts offer an unmatched articulation of this new biopolitical terrain that, regardless of your perspective, is must-read material.

Osagie K. Obasogie is an associate professor of law at the University of California, Hastings, with a joint appointment at UC San Francisco's Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley

Book information:
Race in a Bottle: The story of BiDil and racialized medicine in a post-genomic age by Jonathan Kahn
Columbia University Press
£24/$35

Fatal Invention: How science, politics, and big business recreate race in the twenty-first century by Dorothy Roberts
New Press
£14.99/$19.95

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NSP says not contesting in Punggol East by-election

SINGAPORE: The National Solidarity Party (NSP) has said it appreciates the open and responsible way that the PAP has handled the discovery of the extra-marital affairs of former Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer.

In a media statement, NSP's Secretary-General Hazel Poa said "regardless of his or her position, each person should be responsible and accountable for his/her actions." And "this is a principle we must uphold."

Ms Poa said the NSP noted with concern the rise in the number of high-profile cases of marital infidelities, and "urged the MCYS to study if these are signs of a rising social problem, and if so, the underlying causes."

She said the impact of a social breakdown to a person's quality of life can never be compensated by economic achievements.

On the possibility of a by-election at Punggol East, Ms Poa said the NSP has decided not to create a multi-cornered fight by contesting, "in the interest of furthering the opposition cause".

The Workers' Party contested in the Punggol East single-member constituency (SMC) at the last election and has indicated its desire to do so again in the event of a by-election.

- CNA/de

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Crave giveaway: Sprint LG Optimus G smartphone

Congrats to Oliver M. of Anaheim, Calif., for winning a copy of Symantec's Norton 360 Multi-Device security suite in last week's giveaway. Now, for this week's prize... Is your smartphone starting to look (and act) a bit shabby? You're in luck! We're offering up a free LG Optimus G from Sprint (please note: you'll be responsible for your own voice and data plan; Sprint includes an unlimited data plan among its choices).

CNET reviewers love this quad-core Android smartphone, calling it "undoubtedly the best phone LG has ever offered." In particular, they're fond of the phone's zippy Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, attractively bright 4.7-inch display, and 13-megapixel camera. The device is also 4G LTE-enabled.

The phone sports a 13-megapixel camera.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

Normally, the LG Optimus G would run you $549.99 without a contract, but you have the chance to get one gratis. How do you go about doing that? There are a few 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) Sprint LG Optimus G, with a retail value of $549.99.


• 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, December 17, 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, December 17, 2012. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

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Global Checkup: Most People Living Longer, But Sicker

If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.

The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.

It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).

First, the good news:

We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.

Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.

Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.

Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.

We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.

And the bad:

Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.

Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.

We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.

To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.

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Critics Faulted Rice's Work on Benghazi, Africa

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice removed herself from possible consideration as secretary of state after becoming yet another player in the divide between the left and right.

Rice, who withdrew her name Thursday, has faced months of criticism over how she characterized the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She also has come under fire for her approach to dealing with African strongmen.

Rice became a target for conservatives when she went on Sunday morning current affairs shows such as ABC News' "This Week" following the Benghazi attack and failed to characterize it as a pre-meditated act of terror. Instead, she said it was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and cited in the region as an example of anti-Islamicism in the West.

After it became clear that Rice's assertions were untrue and elements of the Obama administration may have known that to be the case, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte said they would do whatever they could to block Rice's possible nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

GOP Senators 'Troubled' After Meeting With Ambassador Rice Watch Video

President Obama to Senator McCain: 'Go After Me' Watch Video

Susan Rice: U.S. Not 'Impotent' in Muslim World Watch Video

"This is about the role she played around four dead Americans when it seems to be that the story coming out of the administration -- and she's the point person -- is so disconnected to reality, I don't trust her," Graham said. "And the reason I don't trust her is because I think she knew better. And if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of America."

Members of the administration defended Rice. At his testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, said Rice was speaking from unclassified talking points given to her by the CIA.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated what Petraeus said outside his closed-door hearing before the Senate.

"The key is that they were unclassified talking points at a very early stage. And I don't think she should be pilloried for this. She did what I would have done or anyone else would have done that was going on a weekend show," Feinstein said. "To say that she is unqualified to be secretary of state, I think, is a mistake. And the way it keeps going, it's almost as if the intent is to assassinate her character."

Minutes after she announced her withdrawal from the process, Graham tweeted, "I respect Ambassador Rice's decision."

McCain's office released a paper statement saying, "Senator McCain thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans."

Over the last few weeks, criticism of Rice had grown beyond her response to Benghazi to include a closer scrutiny of her work in Africa, where she had influence over U.S. policy during the Clinton administration.

Critics of her Africa dealings were not partisan -- but included human rights workers, journalists and some Africans themselves.

Among the most serious critiques was the accusation that she actively protected Rwandan President Paul Kagame and senior members of his government from being sanctioned for funding and supporting the rebels that caused Eastern Congo's recent violence.

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Justin Bieber was marked for death, castration?

ALBUQUERQUE: New Mexico police believe Canadian singer Justin Bieber may have been the target of a bizarre plot to kill as well as castrate him and his bodyguard, US media reports said.

According to a police affidavit, Dana Martin, a man who is serving two consecutive life sentences in New Mexico for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in 2000, had hatched a plot to kill Bieber and his bodyguard at the star's New York concert, along with two other victims in Vermont.

Martin had convinced fellow inmate Mark Staake to do the killing.

Upon his release in November, Staake in turn recruited his nephew Tanner Ruane to be his partner in crime.

New Mexico police said the murder plot apparently involved strangulation with a paisley tie, as well as castration.

Interestingly, it was Martin, an obsessive Bieber fan who has the star's name tattooed on his leg, that foiled his own plot.

Ruane contacted Martin about the plot after Staake was arrested in Vermont on November 19, for outstanding arrest warrants in New Mexico.

Martin inexplicably decided to go to the police the next day, and told them about the entire plan.

Ruane was eventually arrested by New York police at a truck stop in Rotterdam on November 26, reportedly with a pair of pruning shears in his car, just days before Bieber's November 28 concert in New York.

-CNA/ha

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U.N. summit derailed over human rights controversy

China's delegation, shown here at the Dubai summit that ends Friday, cited the "security of the state" when objecting to human rights language.

(Credit:
ITU)

A United Nations summit suddenly ran aground today after China, Algeria, and Iran objected to a U.S.-backed proposal that would include a mention of "human rights obligations" in a proposed telecommunications treaty.

Algeria's delegate warned at the U.N. summit in Dubai there were many other nations -- calling them "silent member states" -- that also opposed the human rights language and forced a temporary adjournment of the proceedings.

China also criticized the human rights language, saying "we also have a very serious question about the necessity of the existence of this text." The "security of the state" is another concern that's equally valid, China's delegate said.

Today's interlude highlighted the deep divisions between the U.S. and its allies and an opposing coalition including China, a rift that led to a vote yesterday to give the International Telecommunication Union a more "active" role in shaping the future of the Internet. The U.S., Sweden, and Finland had opposed that language but lost the vote.

The human rights language is straightforward. One recent version of the document (PDF) says that nations will "implement these regulations in a manner that respects and upholds their Human Rights Obligations."

But Algeria's delegate replied by saying that the language does not have a "rightful place" in the ITU's proposed International Telecommunications Regulations that would become binding on member states. Malaysia's delegate worried that the capitalization of Human Rights Obligations would prove problematic, warning that "the international court system can always find [a way] to alter the variances of these meanings. And especially when you put the H in capital, the R in capital, and the O in capital."

It's no accident that the nations that have been the most vocal in opposition to the human rights language also enjoy some of the most checkered human rights records.

China has been dubbed a "predator" of press freedom. It blocks thousands of Web sites and extensively monitors its citizens' Internet activities. Algeria has censored Web sites critical of the government, monitored Internet chat rooms, and indefinitely banned public demonstrations.

"We think this provision is a very important matter," Sweden's delegate said, referring to the human rights language. "And we support the amendments proposed by the United States. We are not here to develop new human rights language, but to reaffirm previous commitments, while implementing these technical [regulations]."

Algeria's request to adjourn the summit, called the World Conference on International Telecommunications, or WCIT, was backed by Iran's delegate, who said that its government has "full respect for observance of the human rights and declaration on human rights." Nevertheless, Iran said, the language referring to "upholding" human rights commitments is unacceptable: "never -- never can we have such a word in any text [of the regulations]."

U.N. and ITU meetings often result, of course, in more rhetoric than substance. During a U.N. conference in Tunisia in 2005, for instance, Iran and African governments proclaimed that the Internet permits too much free speech, with Cuba's delegate announcing that Fidel Castro believes it's time to create a new organization "which administers this network of networks."

The difference this time is that the ITU summit, which ends Friday, is designed to rewrite the International Telecommunications Regulations (PDF), a multilateral treaty that governs international communications traffic. The treaty was established in 1988, when home computers used dial-up modems, the Internet was primarily a university network, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a mere four years old.

In a sharply partisan U.S. election year, skepticism about the U.N. process has emerged as a rare point of bipartisan accord: the House of Representatives unanimously approved a resolution last week aimed at sending a strong message to the ITU. It said, in part, that "the consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States [is] to promote a global Internet free from government control."

Google has organized a campaign to draw attention to the summit, saying some governments "are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet." Advocacy groups Fight for the Future and AccessNow have launched WhatIsTheITU.org to warn that the ITU poses "a risk to freedom of expression" online. And Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, has warned about an ITU power grab.

A ITU document, called DT/51-E (PDF), leaked this week showed shows that the U.N. agency wants to become more involved in "Internet-related technical, development and public policy issues" -- a broad term designed to sweep in hot-button areas including cybersecurity, spam, surveillance, and censorship.

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Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

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N. Korean Missile Hits Target of Alarming the World

North Korea's successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile hit its target: it bolstered the standing of its young tyrant Kim Jong Un and raised the specter of being able to eventually strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.

The pride in the success of the launch -- after several failures -- is a huge boost for Kim Jong Un, 29, who took power one year ago. He has been trying to cement his authority and win the hearts of the people with soft social and economic reforms, like allowing women to wear pants or more small businesses to operate based on profit.

But the rocket launch was on a different scale. A North Korean female announcer in a pink and dark grey national costume excitedly read an announcement of the missile's success and national TV aired interviews with people jumping and cheering on the news.

There had been reservations within and outside of North Korea when Kim Jong Un took power after his father's death on Dec. 17 last year as to whether the young Kim could lead a nuclear state. Looking determined at his first official appearance earlier this year, he had pledged to fulfill the legacy of his father Kim Jong Il to become a "self-sufficient strong nation" with space rocket technology.

The missile is believed to have a range of 6,212 miles, enough distance to reach the west coast of the United States. Its existence, along with a small North Korean nuclear arsenal, is an alarming possibility for many.

PHOTOS: An Inside Look At North Korea

North Korea, however, says it was simply putting a satellite in orbit.

"Picking on our launch (and not others) accusing that ours is a long-range missile and a provocative act causing instability comes from seeing us from a hostile point of view," said North Korea's foreign ministry in an official statement. "We do not want this to be overblown into something that none of us intended to be and hope all related nations act with reason and calmness."

But North Korean denials carry little credibility.

This evidence that North Korea has mastered the long-range missile technology does not mean there will be an imminent nuclear threat.

"They haven't figured out how to weaponize a nuclear (bomb) that will fit in a missile, nor do they have accurate guidance at long ranges," said Stephen Ganyard, ABC News consultant and former deputy assistant secretary of state.

Another crucial technology North Korea is yet to achieve is a proper heat shielding required to protect the warhead while re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

"This is a big leap for Pyongyang. They have been a threat with potential capability. But now a new era begins as a threat with possible capability," said Hwee-Rhak Park, professor of political leadership at Kookmin University in Seoul.

There was obvious alarm, however, as the international community condemned the launch, as North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak convened an emergency national security meeting. Japan's envoy to the United Nations called for consultations on the launch within the U.N. Security Council. Russian Foreign Ministry said it "has caused us deep regret," and even China "expressed regret," a significant notch up in condemnation from previous statements on North Korea, its traditional ally.

That international attention, analysts in Seoul say, is exactly what North Korea wanted.

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Mass 12/12/12 weddings in Hong Kong, Singapore, China

HONG KONG: Thousands of couples in Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore flocked Wednesday to tie the knot on 12/12/12, seeking good fortune for marriages begun on the century's last repeating date.

Authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively said 696 and 540 couples were scheduled to attend marriage registries, continuing a trend which has seen couples flocking to marry on 11/11/11 and 10/10/10 in both cities.

The figure is a near-fourfold increase compared to the daily average in Hong Kong and about an eightfold spike for non-Muslim weddings in Singapore, which is three-quarters ethnic Chinese.

Couples also queued to marry in many mainland Chinese cities, on the basis that 12/12/12 sounded like "Will love/will love/will love" in Chinese, the official news agency Xinhua reported.

The atmosphere was abuzz with hundreds of people crowding one of Hong Kong's five marriage registries, taking photos of brides and grooms in full wedding regalia as they congratulated the newlyweds.

"Today's date is very special and we can get married before doomsday as well," joked 34-year-old groom Raymond Ip.

Some doomsayers believe December 21 could be the date the world ends.

"There won't be a 13/13/13," Ip said, adding that he had booked the day half-a-year in advance to secure a spot.

Groom Terance Fung, 29, agreed. "Today is the last day of the century with the same date numbers, so it is quite special," he said.

In Singapore, hundreds of couples and family members trooped in batches to the marriage registry despite pouring rain.

12/12/12 was, however, a less popular day to tie the knot than previous sequential dates.

Hong Kong saw 1,002 weddings on November 11, 2011, which signified "Eternal love", and 859 weddings on October 10, 2010 which represented "Perfection".

Singapore had 553 and 724 marriages respectively on the same dates. The all-time high for a single day there was on February 14, 1995, when 1,082 couples were married because the western and Chinese Valentine's Day coincided.

Extra staff were deployed at the marriage registry at Changchun, in China's northeastern province of Jilin, where 2,000 couples were expected.

But the office director Wang Zhe played down the significance of so-called lucky dates.

"Every day is a lucky day to get married and it will be the most unforgettable day of their lives," Wang was quoted as saying.

- AFP/lp

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MediaTek joins Samsung, Nvidia quad-core club

MediaTek will take on Samsung and Nvidia in the emerging market for mobile quad-core chips.

The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company today announced the MT6589, a quad-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) that integrates a modem supporting HSPA+ and other international standards.

Integration of a modem into a quad-core chip is a first, the company says.

The processor is based on ARM's Cortex-A7 design, the same technology used in Qualcomm's upcoming quad-core S4 processors.

But that Qualcomm chip won't be available commercially until well into next year. The MediaTek chip, on the other hand, will appear in smartphones that are expected to ship in the first quarter of 2013.

That would make it the first quad-core chip based on the new Cortex-A7 design.

That said, there isn't exactly a dearth of quad-core competition. Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 is already used in phones from HTC. And the Galaxy S3 uses Samsung's new Exynos 4 Quad chip.

The MediaTek MT6589 supports 1080p 30fps/30fps low-power video playback and recording, a 13MP camera, and up to a 1,920x1,080 resolution display.

No carriers announced smartphones using the chip today. Those phone roll-outs are expected next year.

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Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

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Gunman 'Tentatively' Identified in Oregon Shooting

A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals and seriously injuring a third before killing himself, has been "tentatively" identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.

The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and proceeding to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.

The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital, according to Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.

PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting

Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of the injured victim, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.

"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.

Christopher Onstott/Pamplen Media Group/Portland Tribune

911 Calls From New Jersey Supermarket Shooting Watch Video

More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, police said. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

"For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place where we can take our families, especially during the holiday season," Roberts said. "Things like this are not supposed to happen."

Roberts also said that shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot. Other shoppers helped escort individuals out of the mall and out of harm's way, he said.

"There were a huge amount of people running in different directions, and it was chaos for a lot of citizens, but true heroes were stepping up in this time of high stress," Roberts said. "E.R. nurses on the scene were providing medical care to those injured, a physician on the scene was helping provide care to the wounded."

Mall shopper Daniel Martinez told KATU that he had just sat down at a Jamba Juice inside the mall when he heard rapid gunfire. He turned and saw the masked gunman, dressed in all black, about 10 feet away from him.

"I just saw him (the gunman) and thought, 'I need to go somewhere,'" Martinez said. "It was so fast, and at that time, everyone was moving around."

Martinez said he ran to the nearest clothing store. As he ran, he motioned for another woman to follow; several others ran to the store as well, hiding in a fitting room. They stayed there for an hour and a half until SWAT teams told them it was safe to leave the mall.

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Heated election campaigns underway all over Japan

TOKYO: A heated election campaign is underway all over Japan as more than 1,500 candidates vie for 480 seats in the lower house of parliament.

This election will also see an unprecedented 12 political parties taking part.

Hundreds of people, sometimes even thousands, gather to listen to election speeches -- especially if they are by prominent lawmakers like Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

The 'celebrity' status of a politician can also help newcomers in their party.

"Today I want our party's new face Miki Yamada, Miki Yamada to win. With that hope I have come to greet you all in Shinjuku ward," said Nobuteru Ishihara, the former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party to a crowd.

"I'm hearing from many wishing the Liberal Democratic Party to do well. I'm receiving calls of 'debutant do well'," said Miki Yamada, the Liberal Democratic Party's candidate for Tokyo's 1st district.

For others with a lower profile, the campaign trail can be a lonely one.

Taro Kosai is running for a lower house seat for the first time.

He is a former assembly member of Minato ward in Tokyo who hopes to reform the fundamentals of the country.

"We have to set a new goal that will replace the typical economic growth target to catch up and surpass US and Europe. That has not been done," he said.

According to public opinion polls, what the public wants to hear the most is how each candidate will handle the Japanese economy.

Japan's economy has been facing a slowdown with its GDP in the July-September quarter showing a contraction. A contraction is expected this quarter as well.

It is a tough task that has not stopped the 1,500 candidates from battling for votes.

In Tokyo's 1st district alone, there are nine candidates running for a seat.

Japan will go the polls on 16 December.

- CNA/jc

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Twitter vs. Instagram in a knock-down, drag out filters fight

With one bold step Monday, Twitter took the photo filtering fight directly to Instagram.

Until yesterday, Instagram was the undisputed leader when it comes to mobile photo filtering and sharing. But with its release of a new version of its mobile app that enables filters, Twitter has launched a very credible challenge to the crown.

To be sure, Instagram has a massive lead, and a very passionate community. But Twitter has a nine-figure user base, and now that it is offering filters -- albeit just eight, while Instagram has 18 free filters -- it can begin to chip away at its competitor's lead.

There's only one way to decide whose filters are best, though, and that's to compare them side by side. With that in mind, CNET took a single photograph and applied each of Twitter's and Instagram's free filters. Only you can decide which is best.

Which filter do you think is best? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London

The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.

As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.

In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")

A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.

Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."

The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")

Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."

A Big Role for Gas

If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")

The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.

As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.

Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.

The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")

A Tougher Road

But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.

A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.

Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.

Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."

In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.

Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:

• In France, the EIA's estimate is that shale gas reserves total 5 trillion cubic meters, or enough to fuel the country for 90 years. But in September, President Francois Hollande pledged to continue a ban on fracking imposed last year by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Poland was also thought to have rich shale gas resources, but initial explorations have determined that original estimates of the country's reserves were overstated by 80 percent to 90 percent. After drilling two exploratory wells there, Exxon Mobil stopped operations. But because of its dependence on Russian gas, Poland is still keen to begin shale gas production.
• South Africa removed a ban on fracking earlier this year. Developers are eyeing large shale gas reserves believed to underlie the semidesert Karoo between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
• Canada's Quebec Province has had a moratorium on shale gas exploration and production, but a U.S. drilling company last month filed a notice of intent to sue to overturn the ban as a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• Germany's Environment Ministry has backed a call to ban fracking near drinking water reservoirs.
• China drilled its initial shale gas wells this year; by 2020, the nation's goal is for shale gas to provide 6 percent of its massive energy needs. The U.S. government's preliminary assessment is that China has the world's largest "technically recoverable" shale resources, about 50 percent larger than stores in the United States. (Related: "China Drills Into Shale Gas, Targeting Huge Reserves")

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Closing Tax Loopholes Not Enough to Avert 'Cliff'?

Closing "corporate tax loopholes" sure sounds good to the average, non-corporate American -- so good, in fact, that politicians talk about it all the time.

House Speaker John Boehner's fiscal-cliff proposal purports to raise $1.6 trillion in revenue by "clos[ing] special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates."

The White House, meanwhile, has complained that Boehner hasn't offered specific loopholes to cut.

On the other side of the aisle, House Democrats have repeatedly offered up "closing overseas tax loopholes" as a means to pay for spending bills -- a plan Republicans routinely reject. In the last two and a half years, President Obama has often been heard griping about writeoffs for corporate jets.

For both Republicans and Democrats, "corporate tax loopholes" are an old saw. But, like most things in politics, raising revenue from "loopholes" gets a bit stickier when the specifics are hashed out.

A misconception about tax "loopholes," some experts say, is that they're loopholes -- gaps in the tax law that corporations have exploited against the law's intent.

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

Fiscal Cliff Battle: President Obama vs. Speaker John Boehner Watch Video

"Most of these proposals were not 'loopholes,' these were incentives," said Eric Toder, co-director of the left-leaning Tax Policy Center.

For example, take the research-and-development tax credit. During the campaign, both Obama and Mitt Romney suggested making it permanent.

"One wouldn't call the research credit a loophole," Toder said.

Cashing in by closing the biggest "loopholes" could be a politically fraught endeavor. To generate meaningful revenue, House Republicans would have to sign off on measures that raised it from taxing the overseas profits of multinational corporations, from ending immediate writeoffs of equipment purchases, or from ending a credit for domestic manufacturing.

When the Joint Committee on Taxation scored some of these provisions, as part of a tax-reform bill pushed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and then-GOP-senator Judd Gregg, it found the government could save significantly:

Savings Over 10 Years: 2011-2021

Taxing Overseas Profits of Multinational Corps: $582.7 billion. In other words, the "overseas tax loophole" Democrats are fond of trashing. While most countries with large economies tax only profits made at home, the U.S. code taxes all income everywhere. To offset the different, U.S. multinational corporations receive credits to prevent double taxing. They also can defer paying any tax on foreign income, until they transfer the money back to the United States.

Taxing that profit could generate significant revenue. But this could be controversial, and large corporations would fight it. A senior aide to one business lobbying group said ending foreign-income deferral would amount to double-taxing U.S. companies and put them at a disadvantage to foreign competitors; one supporter of ending deferral suggested U.S. companies have been able to hide profits overseas, avoiding taxes altogether.

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MoMath: Manhattan's Museum of Mathematics

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences and space reporter

MATHEMATICS is awesome, full stop. That's the philosophy behind a new museum opening next week in New York City.

The founders of the Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) know they have a fight on their hands, given the pervasive idea that the subject is boring, hard and scary. But they are determined to give mathematics a makeover, with exhibits that express an unselfconscious, giddy joy in exploring the world of numbers and forms.

"We want to show a different side of mathematics," says museum co-founder Cindy Lawrence. "Our goal is to get kids excited, and show them the math they're doing in school is just one tree in a whole huge forest."

To this end, mathematics pervades every aspect of the design, sometimes in surprising places. Take the museum's Enigma Café. At first glance, it looks like any other trendy, modern Manhattan cafe. But instead of coffee, puzzles will be served. And a careful look reveals that the floor is a 6-by-6 grid, the walls are made of Tetris-like puzzle shapes called pentominoes, and the tables are arranged as a knight would progress across a chessboard.

"We try to hide math everywhere," says Lawrence.

The inspiration for MoMath came shortly after a beloved but dated museum on Long Island closed down in 2006. MoMath co-founder Glen Whitney, a former hedge fund analyst specialising in algorithms, got a group together to fill the void, but for months all they did was talk - until they were offered a booth at the 2009 World Science Festival in New York.

"There was a bit of a debate amongst the group about whether we should accept that offer because, in fact, we didn't really have anything to put in a booth," Lawrence says.

But accept it they did, and the deluge of ideas they had for the booth overflowed into a travelling exhibit called the Math Midway. The Midway in its turn laid the groundwork for the full-scale museum, scheduled to open on 15 December in Madison Square Park.

MoMath exhibits take abstract concepts like number theory and topology and let you put your hands and even feet all over them. Take Coaster Rollers: the exhibit is a cart sitting atop a tray full of rubber shapes that look like other-worldly acorns.

These forms are all "surfaces of constant width" - a shape whose highest point is always the same height above a table, no matter which way you turn it. Spheres are the most famous example, but it turns out there are an infinite variety of shapes with the same property. My cart flies over the alien acorns as smoothly as if it were running on ball bearings. I've learned something new about topology, but more than that, I climb off the cart grinning and full of adrenalin. The idea is cemented: mathematics is kinetic. It's active.

It is also creative. The museum has a design studio called the Mathenaeum that lets visitors design geometric figures that may have never been dreamed of before. Designs created one day will be 3D printed the next, and put on display the day after that.

The space is often beautiful. The museum's main staircase spirals around a two-storey paraboloid - a parabola that has been spun around a central pole to make a 3D sculpture. The shape is laced with ropes of lights that run between points on the paraboloid where the radius is a whole number. The design, shot through with mathematics, is mesmerising.

Each exhibit has been designed to feel like a different place with a different style: a Renaissance pavilion, a Gothic cathedral, a military site, a cafe. "They're places you can occupy," says chief of design Tim Nissen. "The idea is that math is actually out there in the world, and we brought it in here," he says, not that mathematics is something you can only find in a museum.

The MoMath team has big hopes for a broader impact. It's widely acknowledged that children in the US are falling behind in the subject. A member of the US National Security Agency, which employs more mathematicians than any other organisation in the country but only hires US citizens, once told Lawrence that in his view, the biggest threat to national security is the lack of US-born mathematicians. But politicians and teachers rarely agree on the best way to address the shortage.

Lawrence has no doubts: the problem is in rote learning in school. "It's like teaching kids to read music, and never even telling them that instruments exist," she says. "You don't fix that by more testing. You do it with a cultural institution that can change the norms and perceptions about math - we want to be that place."

Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) opens 15 December in New York

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Low-interest environment driving investors to seek higher yields

SINGAPORE: The low-interest environment is driving investors to seek higher returns as global economic conditions improve.

Flushed with liquidity from major central banks' monetary easing, most analysts agreed that there is little upside left on safe assets like sovereign government debts.

Instead, analysts are seeing more investors investing in high yield bonds often classified as distressed that offer returns of over 6 percent per annum.

With the US Presidential election and China's leadership change out of the way, Asian investors are working up an appetite for riskier assets.

But this time, they are putting their money in fixed income products instead of Asian equities, which offer far better returns than bonds.

Thailand and Philippines stock indices have showed a over 30 percent return so far this year, while, bigger market like Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained some over 20 percent.

Schroder Investment Management's head of Asian Fixed Income, Rajeev De Mello, said: "Interest rates are going to remain close to zero. So for a lot of investors who need returns, they don't have too much choice -- it is either they buy bonds or buy equities.

"But for many types of investors, equities may be just too riskier and they may need a more predictable revenue stream."

In recent months, Asia has seen a growing number of corporate debt issues, which are oversubscribed.

Some investors are even drawn to beaten-down corporate bonds.

CreditSights' senior credit analyst, Sandra Chow, said: "In the past couple of weeks, we've seen a big shift into the high yield sector. A lot of bonds which was previously traded at double-digit yield are now coming to single-digit or even lower yields."

The credit quality of corporate bonds may not be improving, but analysts said bond funds face growing pressure from clients to deliver better-than-market returns of 9 to 10 percent.

Apart from market liquidity, French bank, Credit Agricole says wealthy individuals in Asia are also on the lookout for steady returns for their growing wealth.

Based on an estimated rate of growth 8 percent a year, China alone is expected to generate some US$560 billion of net new wealth every year.

- CNA/lp

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Five lies your TV salesperson will tell you

Using the time-honored tactics of obfuscation, misdirection, and a little bit of fear, the people who try to sell you TVs can hit you with some heavy-duty lies.

Now this isn't to say that all TV sales people are bad, nor that any necessarily do this out of malice (there's plenty of misinformation out there confused as truth). But when it's your dollar on the line, being prepared with some facts can only be a good thing.

For a primer on all the jargon, check out "TV tech explainer: Every HDTV technology decoded."

'This TV has a million-to-one contrast ratio.'
No, it doesn't. Every TV manufacturer lies about contrast ratio. Not a single one is remotely accurate. So it's impossible to prescribe an exact number to any TV given only the manufacturers data. The fact is, plasmas have better native contrast ratios than LCDs (LED or otherwise). There are three local-dimming LED LCDs on the market this year (Elite by Sharp, Sony HX950, and LG LM9600), and they're all extremely expensive. These offer similar contrast ratios than the best plasmas, though not exactly. For more info, check out "Contrast ratio (or how every TV manufacturer lies to you)."

'This TV has better sound.'
You know what, let's say they're right. Let's say TV A has better sound than TV B. The fact is, no TV sounds good. So all they're really saying is, "This TV sounds less bad than this other TV."

The thinness that we all love in flat-panel TVs means the speaker drivers by their very nature have to be very small. Small drivers can't do much to create sound waves.

The wiser salespeople will direct you towards a sound bar or other home audio system. This is definitely where you should spend a few dollars. Pretty much every sound bar will sound better than the TV speakers, and the better sound bars actually sound pretty good.

Check out CNET's page on the best home audio and best sound bars.

'TVs break all the time. You need an extended warranty.'
Another example of this is "I see TVs come in for repair all the time." From a rhetorical standpoint, this is a rather brilliant argument. This person works at the store. They see lots of TVs coming in for repair. So as an "authority," this seems a valid point.

Except, it isn't.

What the salesperson isn't seeing, is all the TVs that don't come in for repair. Which is most of them. Flat-panel TVs are very reliable, so an extended warranty is a largely a waste of money.

'LED TVs have the best picture quality.'
Nope. First of all, there's no such thing as an "LED TV." Every
LED TV is just a standard LCD TV that uses LEDs to create light instead of the "old-fashioned" cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL). LCDs have their positives, like light output and lower energy consumption, but when it comes to a direct picture quality comparison, plasmas have better black levels, better contrast ratios, and better viewing angles (for those not sitting directly in front of the TV). For example, four of the five TVs CNET picked for best picture quality are plasmas (the one LED LCD is also the most expensive TV you can buy per-screen-inch).

There's more to it than that, as I lay out in "Why LED does not mean a better picture" and "LED LCD vs. plasma vs. LCD."

'If you want the best picture and sound, you need the best HDMI cable.'
This is the one that annoys me the most, and I've written four articles about it for CNET alone. This is the one that eliminates any guilt I have impugning the good name of some hard-working salespeople. There is no picture or sound quality difference between any HDMI cable. None. At all. So if you spend $3 or $300, the image and sound will be 100 percent exactly the same.

I could talk about this forever, and indeed I have. Check out "Why all HDMI cables are the same,"
"Why all HDMI cables are the same, Part 2,"
"Still more reasons why all HDMI cable are the same," and the "HDMI cable buying guide."

Bottom line

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! -- Upton Sinclair

A commenter on one of the HDMI articles posted the above quote, and it's perfect. But look, be polite. Don't waste someone's time. This goes for both sides. They're just trying to make a living, you're just trying to keep as much of your living as possible. When I sold electronics at Circuit City, I was given all sorts of information, presented as truth, to tell customers. Much of which I know now to be false, or at least "truth adjacent." But as an 18-year-old, long haired (yep, believe it), wannabe guitar god, I didn't know any better. So give the poor guy or gal the benefit of the doubt that they're not knowingly lying to you.

Except for that HDMI cable stuff; man that bugs me.

How about you? Been told any doozys?

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Got a question for Geoff? Send him an e-mail! If it's witty, amusing, and/or a good question, you may just see it in a post just like this one. No, he won't tell you which TV to buy. Yes, he'll probably truncate and/or clean up your e-mail. You can also send him a message on Twitter: @TechWriterGeoff.

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