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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOBY JORRIN/AFP/Getty Images

Obama Balances Fiscal Cliff, Defense Department Appointment Watch Video

Boehner is offering half that, $800 billion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Tiny tug of war in cells underpins life

TUG of war could well be the oldest game in the world. Cells use it for division, and now researchers have measured the forces involved when an amoeba plays the game.

Hirokazu Tanimoto and Masaki Sano at the University of Tokyo, Japan, studied what happens during the division of Dictyostelium - a slime mould that has barely changed through eons of evolution. The amoeba uses tiny projections or "feet" to gain traction on a surface.

The pair placed the amoeba on a flexible surface embedded with fluorescent beads. They used traction force microscopy to measure how the organism deformed the pattern of beads: the greater the deformation, the greater the force.

Dictyostelium normally exerts a force of about 10 nanonewtons when it moves, but the pair found this roughly doubles during division. That's because the cell uses its feet to pull itself in opposite directions, as if playing tug of war with itself.

The forces involved are about 100 billion times smaller than those used in the human form of the game, Tanimoto says (Physical Review Letters, in press).

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

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

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

Read More..

Spain hints it may not reach 2012 public deficit goal

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in remarks published Sunday it would be difficult to meet the goal of cutting the public deficit to 6.3 per cent of gross domestic product this year in line with European Union demands.

"It is very complicated to reduce the deficit by 2.6 points in a context of recession, with as many problems with revenue and such high financing costs," Rajoy told La Razon newspaper.

"Spain was asked to make a very difficult effort, to go from 8.9 per cent to 6.3 per cent in only one year," said Rajoy, who has until now pledged to respect the deficit target.

"Our goal is to do things well and we will see what will happen at the end of the year," he said.

Spain, the fourth largest economy in the eurozone, is engaged in a deep austerity programme and is seeking to recover 150 billion euros between 2012 and 2014, through both tax increases and budget cuts.

The task is all the harder as Spain slid back into recession at the end of 2011, less than two months after re-emerging from the previous one.

Since taking power after last November's huge election victory, Rajoy has introduced a series of tough spending cuts and tax rises to lower the deficit and stabilise Spain's public finances.

- AFP/ck

Read More..

McAfee nabbed? His blog says maybe, following CNN interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Into the Sea

  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters

  A spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into the ocean, sending up plumes of steam as it made contact with the waves.

  Though lava can still be viewed from Kalapana near the Big Island's Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, ocean entry is no longer occurring, according to the National Park Service.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Sea of Fire

  
  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
  

  The lava traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) from Kilauea’s Pu'u O'o vent to the ocean. When lava reaches the water, it cools and hardens, forming a lava delta that can be dangerous to nearby onlookers, according to Reuters.

  The news service reported that no communities on the Big Island were threatened by the lava flow.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Volcanic Flare

  
  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
  

  A burst of volcanic activity erupts from Kilauea’s crater in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on November 27.

  The volcano has been erupting continuously for nearly 30 years. No major damage has been suffered by a town since 1986, according to Reuters.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Fiery Encounter

  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters

  “Ocean entries are beautiful but dangerous,” said Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in a statement reported by Reuters. She warned that the steam could be more hazardous than it appears.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Point of Contact

  
  Photograph by Matt Northam, My Shot
  

  A plume of smoke billows where lava from Kilauea meets the sea in this aerial photo taken November 27.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Photograph by Peter Vancoillie, Your Shot

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  

');

---

 $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_saleprice_t +'';
} else {
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
}
html += '

';

$("#ecom_43331 ul.ecommerce_all_img").append(html);




o.totItems++;

}// end for loop
} // end if data.response.numFound != 0

if(o.totItems != o.maxItems){
if(o.defaultItems.length > 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage && !o.searchComplete){
o.doSearchPage();
} else if(!o.searchComplete) {
o.byID = false;
o.doSearch();
}
}// end if
}// end parseResults function

o.trim = function(str) {
return str.replace(/^\s\s*/, '').replace(/\s\s*$/, '');
}

o.doSearchPage = function(){
o.byID = false;

var tempSearch = window.location.search;
var searchTerms ="default";
var temp;

if( tempSearch.substr(0,7) == "?search"){
temp = tempSearch.substr(7).split("&");
searchTerms = temp[0];
} else {
temp = tempSearch.split("&");
for(var j=0;j 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage){
o.doSearchPage();
} else {
o.doSearch();
}

}// end init function

}// end ecommerce object

var store_43331 = new ecommerce_43331();





store_43331.init();

Read More..

Wikileaks Case: Guards Deny Intimidating Manning

(Brendan Smialkowski/AFP/Getty Images)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Weaver ants help flowers get the best pollinator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Accident between bus, motorcycle along Woodlands

Accident between bus, motorcycle along Woodlands
Posted: 01 December 2012 1949 hrs

SINGAPORE: An accident between a bus and motorcycle occurred on Saturday along Woodlands Centre Road.

Police received the call at around 10:00am.

The motorcyclist was conveyed conscious to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.

Investigations are ongoing.

- CNA/ck

Read More..

Android-based Ouya game console shipping soon

Early birds get their hands on Ouya after December 28.

(Credit:
Ouya)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More..

Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Into the Sea

  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters

  A spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into the ocean, sending up plumes of steam as it made contact with the waves.

  Though lava can still be viewed from Kalapana near the Big Island's Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, ocean entry is no longer occurring, according to the National Park Service.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Sea of Fire

  
  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
  

  The lava traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) from Kilauea’s Pu'u O'o vent to the ocean. When lava reaches the water, it cools and hardens, forming a lava delta that can be dangerous to nearby onlookers, according to Reuters.

  The news service reported that no communities on the Big Island were threatened by the lava flow.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Volcanic Flare

  
  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
  

  A burst of volcanic activity erupts from Kilauea’s crater in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on November 27.

  The volcano has been erupting continuously for nearly 30 years. No major damage has been suffered by a town since 1986, according to Reuters.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Fiery Encounter

  Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters

  “Ocean entries are beautiful but dangerous,” said Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in a statement reported by Reuters. She warned that the steam could be more hazardous than it appears.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Point of Contact

  
  Photograph by Matt Northam, My Shot
  

  A plume of smoke billows where lava from Kilauea meets the sea in this aerial photo taken November 27.

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Photograph by Peter Vancoillie, Your Shot

  Published November 30, 2012

  
  

');

---

 $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_saleprice_t +'';
} else {
html += ' $'+ doc.ngstore_price_t +'';
}
html += '

';

$("#ecom_43331 ul.ecommerce_all_img").append(html);




o.totItems++;

}// end for loop
} // end if data.response.numFound != 0

if(o.totItems != o.maxItems){
if(o.defaultItems.length > 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage && !o.searchComplete){
o.doSearchPage();
} else if(!o.searchComplete) {
o.byID = false;
o.doSearch();
}
}// end if
}// end parseResults function

o.trim = function(str) {
return str.replace(/^\s\s*/, '').replace(/\s\s*$/, '');
}

o.doSearchPage = function(){
o.byID = false;

var tempSearch = window.location.search;
var searchTerms ="default";
var temp;

if( tempSearch.substr(0,7) == "?search"){
temp = tempSearch.substr(7).split("&");
searchTerms = temp[0];
} else {
temp = tempSearch.split("&");
for(var j=0;j 0){
o.getItemByID(o.defaultItems.shift());
} else if(o.isSearchPage){
o.doSearchPage();
} else {
o.doSearch();
}

}// end init function

}// end ecommerce object

var store_43331 = new ecommerce_43331();





store_43331.init();

Read More..