Kenyan elephant numbers plummet by 1000 in four years

IT'S a case of up then down for Kenya's second largest population of elephants. After a promising growth spurt, the elephants are now dying faster than they are being born. The decline is being blamed on illegal poaching, driven by Asia's demand for ivory. ...

Read More..

Boehner in hot seat in game of fiscal chicken

WASHINGTON: With room for maneuver slipping away, top US Republican John Boehner is in a bind over how to avoid going over the fiscal cliff: embrace higher taxes and earn conservatives' ire, or scupper a deal and incur Americans' wrath.Another option, one that few non-partisans see as very viable, is for President Barack Obama to cave in and agree to Republican demands not to raise taxes,...

Read More..

Handcuffs that give you an electric shock?

Progress?(Credit:Patent Bolt)Sometimes an invention comes along that makes you excited about the future.For a long time, it seems that handcuffs have been stuck in the movies of old. They restrain you, but, odd for our interactive world, that's all they seem to do.Might I tempt you toward futuristic handcuffs that will offer you a small involuntary judder?I am grateful to Gizmodo for discovering that...

Read More..

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't...

Read More..

Gay Marriage: Will Justices Follow Popular Opinion?

The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.This...

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 9 December 2012

Climate talks stumbling towards a deal As the Qatar climate summit looks set to run into the weekend, we look at some key issues, such as compensation for poor countries harmed by climate changeTwin spacecraft map the mass of the man in the moon Two satellites called Ebb and Flow have revealed the fine variations in the moon's surface with the most detailed gravity map everJust cut down on...

Read More..

Philippine typhoon survivors 'loot' shops

TAGUM, Philippines: Hungry survivors of a deadly Philippine typhoon looted shops and warehouses in a hard-hit town in a bid to stay alive amid stalled aid deliveries, a rescue official said.Local officials monitored the desperate scenes in the early aftermath of Typhoon Bopha's onslaught in the isolated southern town of Cateel, Cedric Daep, a provincial public safety official, told AFP."The...

Read More..

Hot new games for iOS

The stars lined up just right this week (read: gift-giving season is here!) to have a number of awesome game sequels and new releases launch all at once. Frankly, there are so many new games that there is no better time than the present to check out what the App Store has to offer.Rick Broida already wrote about Grand Theft Auto: Vice City earlier today, but there are plenty more that would make nice...

Read More..

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't...

Read More..

Baby Gabriel's Mother Sentenced to Prison

Elizabeth Johnson -- who at one point admitted to killing her son, the missing infant Gabriel Johnson, before saying she gave him away -- told a judge she "deserved the maximum" sentence, before receiving a prison term of 5.25 years, half of the max.In October, Johnson, 26, was found guilty of custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment stemming from the disappearance of...

Read More..

Space bigwigs offer billion-dollar private moon trips

Robots aren't the only ones heading to the moon. The first private company offering regular trips to the lunar surface plans to start flights in 2020, shuttling people two at a time on exploratory missions. However, with an expected price tag of $1.4 billion per flight, or around $750 million per person, the trek...

Read More..

Indonesia anti-graft agency probes sports minister

JAKARTA: Indonesia's anti-corruption agency has named the country's sports minister as a suspect in a multi-million-dollar graft case, in the latest scandal to hit the president's party ahead of the 2014 elections.The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) asked authorities late Thursday to ban sports minister Andi Mallarangeng from travelling as it probes the construction of a sports...

Read More..

California AG sues Delta over mobile app privacy

California's attorney general filed a lawsuit today against Delta Air Lines for failing to prominently display a privacy policy in its mobile app.The lawsuit is the first brought under the state's new Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires Web sites and apps that collect personal information to prominently post a privacy policy, as well as give users the opportunity to read the privacy policy...

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Lunar Gravity, Venusian Volcano

Cassiopeia’s BubbleImage courtesy T.A. Rector, UAA/WIYN/NOAO/NSFA new camera called the One Degree Imager, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, is responsible...

Read More..

John McAfee Out of Hospital, Back in Cell

Software millionaire John McAfee has been returned to an immigration detention cell in Guatemala after being rushed to a Guatemala City hospital via ambulance.McAfee, 67 -- who soon may be deported back to Belize, where authorities want to question him about the shooting death of his neighbor -- was reportedly found prostrate on the floor of his cell and unresponsive.He was...

Read More..

Chemical key to cell division revealed

In each of our cells, most of the genetic material is packaged safely within the nucleus, which is protected by a double membrane. The biochemistry behind how this membrane transforms when cells divide has finally been unravelled, offering insights that could provide new ways of fighting cancer and some rare genetic disorders. ...

Read More..

Japan polls tip big win for opposition

TOKYO: Japan's main opposition party will comfortably win the general election this month, opinion polls showed Thursday, the first time surveys have indicated anything other than a fragile coalition.The hawkish chief of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Shinzo Abe is also tipped to win back the premiership, an office he held for around a year until 2007, according to a telephone...

Read More..

Mobile apps outpace the Web and neck-in-neck with TV

It looks like a four-year-old industry is hijacking one that has been around for six decades. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, the time people spend on mobile apps is now nearly neck-in-neck with time spent watching television. "With new content released via thousands of new apps each day, we expect this trend to continue," Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf wrote in a blog post today. "In fact, we...

Read More..

A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?

NASA is so delighted with Curiosity's Mars mission that the agency wants to do it all again in 2020, with the possibility of identifying and storing some rocks for a future sample return to Earth.The formal announcement, made at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting, represents a triumph for the NASA Mars program, which had fallen on hard times due to steep budget cuts....

Read More..

McAfee Arrested for Entering Guatemala Illegally

Eccentric software tycoon John McAfee, wanted in Belize for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor, has been arrested in Guatemala for entering the country illegally, his Guatemala attorney told ABC News. Before McAfee's arrest, he told ABC News in an exclusive interview he would be seeking asylum in Guetemala. McAfee was arrested by the Central American country's...

Read More..