Conn. Shooter Had Hundreds of Rounds













Adam Lanza had hundreds of rounds and used multiple high capacity magazines when he went on a rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 first graders and six adults, Connecticut State Police said today.


After shooting at victims in two classrooms and a hallway with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle, he put a bullet into his own head with a handgun.


"The weapon that was utilized most of the time during this horrific crime was identified as a Bushmaster AR-15 assault weapon," Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said. "The trajectory of the shots and all of the ammunition used in the horrible crime will be examined."


Vance said three weapons were found at the scene, while a fourth, a shotgun, was recovered from Lanza's vehicle.


While the shattered community of Newtown awaits President Obama's visit this afternoon, plans for the first funerals were announced.


Noah Pozner, the first grader whose twin sister survived the massacre, and 6-year-old Jack Pinto, will be laid to rest in separate ceremonies Monday afternoon.


The funeral for Jessica Rekos, 6, will be held on Tuesday at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, where several of the victims' families attend mass.


The community faced a new shock today when parishioners attending the midday service at Rose of Lima were told to evacuate after a church official became aware of a credible threat.


About 1,000 people were gathered inside the church at the time observing one of four memorial services being held there.


Witnesses said police entered the church and told parishioners that a threat had been made against the church and the surrounding area and that everyone had to leave immediately.


More than a dozen state troopers armed with assault rifles entered the church's education center next to the church, but after a short time it was determined that threat was over.


Brian Wallace, director of communications for the Diocese of Bridgeport, said that after massacre on Friday, he felt evacuation was a vital precaution to take.


"I don't think any of us could be surprised about anything after what has happened," Wallace said.


Meanwhile, police are working to understand what set Lanza off on his rampage.










Connecticut Shooting: Churches Services Honor Victims Watch Video









Pastor Explains How Girl Played Dead to Survive Watch Video





ABC News has learned that investigators have seized computers belonging to the 20-year-old from the home he shared with his mother Nancy, the same place he killed her before going to the Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he slaughtered students in two first-grade classes and teachers and staff.


CLICK HERE for full coverage of the tragedy at the elementary school.


Authorities are forensically investigating those computers and are also examining devices owned by Ryan Lanza, the gunman's older brother, to see if they can learn anything more about Adam and what caused him to snap.


Members of the community gathered today at churches across the small town, seeking comfort, clarity or just a cry.


With intermittent freezing rain falling, the bells tolled at St. Rose of Lima as parishioners came for the morning service.


Little more than a week before Christmas when congregants celebrate the birth of the savior, they instead were mourning the deaths of people they knew.


Many of the victims attended the church and the clergy is preparing for the funerals of eight of the children.


As parishioners arrived at the church for the morning service, many stopped at a makeshift memorial with flowers, teddy bears and candles. On large white boards, people wrote notes that express condolences, hope, and even forgiveness.


One says "Rest in Peace Sweet Angels."


After a man and woman knelt down at the memorial -- the woman overcome by grief crying into her husband's arms -- two police officers opened their cars with a delivery: bouquets of flowers and teddy bears stacked in the back of their vehicles. They delicately placed each one down and then both knelt down at the vigil.


The female officer began crying and her male partner put his arm around her to comfort her. She quickly got up, walking to her car while wiping away tears, and then they pulled away.


READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims


A mother and two young daughters came next. She gripped one while she also wiped away tears. A father and his young daughter also came up, the father kneeling and talking to the girl before they slowly walked into the church.


A state police trooper was also among those dropping flowers at the memorial comprised of candles, stuffed toys and a sign that says "Sleep in heavenly peace."


Police Tracing Guns Used in Shooting


At a news conference this morning, Vance said there are many pieces missing in the investigation and investigators continue to work inside Sandy Hook Elementary School to collect evidence.


Key to the investigation will also be the four firearms found at or near the crime scene, he said.


"We are tracing them historically, all the way back to when they were on the workbench being assembled," Vance said.


Authorities are wrapping up their processing of the exterior crime scene, which included vehicles parked in the school's lot at the time of the shooting, Vance said, and have began to release the cars back to their owners.


Vance declined to say what evidence has or has not been collected.


"We can't take segments of an investigation and discuss that publicly because something taken out of context could be misinterpreted," he said, adding that in the end, the "goal is to answer every single question.






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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.


















































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




































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


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








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Russia arrests opposition leaders at banned rally






MOSCOW: Russian police on Saturday arrested several opposition leaders, including well-known blogger Alexei Navalny, as hundreds of people packed a central Moscow square in defiance of an official ban to protest Vladimir Putin's rule.

Scores of Muscovites, many holding white roses, defied the authorities by turning up at Lubyanka Square, the seat of the FSB security services, despite temperatures of minus 14 degrees C (seven degrees F) and warnings that the unsanctioned rally would be broken up.

Navalny, possibly the most charismatic figure in the protest movement against the Russian president, was detained a day after investigators launched a new criminal probe against him for suspected fraud. patisserie

"It's raving mad. (They) simply snatched me from the crowd," Navalny tweeted from inside a police van.

Besides Navalny, police also arrested Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of leftist group the Left Front, and activists Ilya Yashin and Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin's late mentor Anatoly Sobchak.

"Looks like I am a very dangerous criminal," Sobchak quipped on Twitter.

The prominent figures arrested all noted on Twitter that the police vans holding them had been equipped with webcams to keep close watch on their behaviour.

Police put the turnout at around 500 people, half of them journalists and bloggers, but an AFP correspondent said the real number of the protesters appeared to be significantly higher.

People laid white lilies, carnations and chrysanthemums at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of Stalin-era purges adorning the square, as a helicopter hovered overhead.

One hour into the rally, the monument was blanketed by piles of flowers.

"Our authorities are repressive," one protester, 48-year-old businessman Andrei Genin, told AFP, sporting a white ribbon, the symbol of the opposition movement against Putin.

City authorities had earlier banned an opposition march through the city, and the opposition Coordination Council had urged Russians to simply turn up at Lubyanka Square.

On the eve of the protest, Russian authorities launched a second major investigation against Navalny, accusing the protest leader and his brother Oleg of embezzling 55 million rubles ($1.8 million, 1.4 million euros) from a trading company.

Navalny, who has already been charged with embezzlement in an earlier case in which he faces up to 10 years in prison, vowed to press ahead with his political activism.

In a separate event, his supporters convened in the Russian capital to establish a new political party that would represent the interests of middle-class urbanities, the backbone of the anti-Putin protests.

Dubbed "The Popular Alliance", the party will promote the "middle class and the European choice", activist Leonid Volkov told Echo of Moscow radio, noting that Navalny himself would not be an official member.

The opposition movement is hoping to maintain momentum despite internal divisions between liberals, leftists and nationalists and the authorities' tough crackdown on dissenters since Putin's return to the Kremlin in May.

Even supporters admit that the euphoria that marked the first opposition protests that erupted after fraud-tainted parliamentary polls last December has largely died down.

Up to 120,000 people gathered near the Kremlin walls at the peak of the protests last winter, a huge number for a country that lost its taste for street politics after the turbulent 1990s.

The last major rally, in September, drew around 14,000 people, according to police, though the opposition argued many more had shown up.

Weeks after his inauguration, Putin signed off on a raft of laws that critics have attacked as a bid to quash dissent.

Scores of activists now face jail time for taking part in a May 6 protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration and for alleged plans to overthrow the Russian strongman with the help of foreign sponsors.

Ahead of Saturday's rally, Moscow prosecutors delivered a warning to leading activists, while police urged Russians to refrain from "provocations".

Smaller rallies were held in several cities across Russia.

Sixty people held a 40-minute march in Tomsk in western Siberia despite temperatures of minus 35 degrees C, a representative of the Solidarnost (Solidarity) movement, Ksenia Fadeyeva, told AFP.

Fourteen people marched in the city of Krasnoyarsk in eastern Siberia, police said.

- AFP/de



Read More..

Apple rumors never cease



The iPad Mini will be a magnet for lots of rumors in the coming months.

The iPad Mini will be a magnet for lots of rumors in the coming months.



(Credit:
Apple)


Apple rumors are a fact of life.


And it's silly to think that tech sites will begin writing fewer stories about the latest
iPad/iPhone chatter.


It's like asking the Washington press corps to stop writing about Beltway scuttlebutt or Hollywood reporters to cease scribbling about la la land -- however frivolous. Ain't gonna happen.


Let's take the
iPad Mini Retina rumor-machine (which is just getting started, by the way).


Retina chatter: A Retina iPad Mini is an intriguing prospect, but it's hardly a fait accompli. If it were, Apple would have announced one on October 23.


So my guess is that any remotely tantalizing Retina rumor that surfaces will be picked up and propagated across the Apple universe.


Usually (but not always) for good reason. Getting a 300-pixel-per-inch display into the Mini's tiny chassis is really, really hard. One phone call and any analyst at NPD DisplaySearch -- who analyze the display industry for a living -- will tell you this.


So, a supply chain tidbit from DigiTimes, for example, that cites "backlighting industry" sources talking about a higher-resolution iPad Mini is definitely interesting.


A Retina Mini would require a smaller LED light apparatus than is used in conventional Retina-class displays, as the DigiTimes story alludes to.


DigiTimes: The Asia supply chain gossip sheet is invariably the source of more than a few rumors. The problem is it's accuracy is a reflection of the unpredictable supply chain it covers. I've discussed this with DisplaySearch analysts more than a few times.


It goes something like this. Some big component supplier gets an order from some big device maker, and a Taipei newspaper reports it. Then a few months pass and said supplier runs into a serious unexpected snag in ramping up production (like Sharp, for example, trying to ramp up IGZO display production and failing initially).


So the device maker has to turn to another supplier for a more practical (and less innovative) solution.


As a result, the Taipei newspaper's story doesn't pan out. But that doesn't mean the newspaper was just passing along bogus rumors. It means it reported what it was hearing as a credible development at the time.



These on-again, off-again scenarios occur constantly in the supply chain, according to DisplaySearch. And it's a real challenge for supply chain analysts to determine what is panning out and what isn't.


DigiTimes' problem is that it doesn't filter the rumors as well as, let's say, a DisplaySearch analyst would. But maybe that's not the intention anyway. Maybe DigiTimes feels it needs to pass along gossip as it hears it. Maybe that's what its Asia-based supply chain readership wants.


And analysts are hardly infallible, either. Some analysts in the financial community come up with much whackier Apple theories, masquerading as erudite analysis, that end up being reported as credible speculation.


But reporters will still regurgitate financial analyst musings, complaints about "dumb" Apple rumors notwithstanding.


Like I said, it's a fact of life.


Read More..

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 Victims Were Shot Multiple Times













The gunman who massacred 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school riddled them with bullets, shooting some of them as many as 11 times, the medical examiner said today.


"I've been at this for a third of a century so my sensibilities may not be the that of the average man, but it's probably the worst I've ever seen," said Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II, who has been a medical examiner for 36 years.


A team of 14 medical technicians worked through the night to complete the grisly job of identifying the children killed by Adam Lanza, 20, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre so their names could be released today.


Several weapons were found in the school, including a semi-automatic rifle.


"All the wounds that I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon," Carver said, and many were shot at close range.


CLICK HERE for full coverage of the tragedy at the elementary school.


"I believe many of them were hit more than once," and he said the wounds were "all over" the children's bodies.


"I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from 3 to 11 wounds a piece," Carver said.


The names of the children slain Friday in the Newtown, Conn., school were released today.


To carry out the identifications, Carver said they "did not bring the families and the bodies into contact." He said the identifications were made through photographs of the children's faces. "It's easier on the families," he said.


Additional work is needed to complete the autopsies and identifications of the seven adults slain in Lanza's killing spree.






Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images











Newtown Teacher Kept 1st Graders Calm During Massacre Watch Video











Newtown School Shooting: What to Tell Your Kids Watch Video





Fresh details of the massacre emerged including the fact that all of the young victims were first graders in two rooms.


Based on the Sandy Hook school directory, all the kids killed were in the first grade and were in two classrooms.


In one class, 15 of the 16 students listed were killed. In the other class, five of the 16 students died along with their teacher Victoria Soto. Also, nine of the deceased students have siblings in the school.


At a nearby firehouse that has become a center for the town a makeshift memorial and vigil has emerged under a sign that reads "Sandy Hook School." People have left flowers, candles, signs that read "Rest in Peace" and "God Bless Sandy Hook Elementary," as well as a cross made of blue flowers and a wreath of teddy bears


With the tally of Lanza's carnage complete, authorities and the grieving people of Newtown, Conn., are left to wonder why he turned the elementary school in this quaint New England town into a slaughter house.


Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said the investigation "did produce some very good evidence" about motive, but he would not go into further detail.


He indicated the evidence came from the shooting scene at the school as well as at the home where Lanza's mother, Nancy, was slain.


Also key will be the lone person shot by Lanza who wasn't killed. The female teacher has not been publicly identified.


"She is doing fine," Vance said at a news conference today. "She has been treated and she'll be instrumental in this investigation."


Vance said it appears that reports of an altercation involving Lanza at the school in the days before the mass slaying are not checking out.


Vance said that Lanza forced his way into the school, but did not say how.


Evidence emerged today that Lanza's rampage began in the office of school principal Dawn Hochsprung while the school intercom was on. It's not clear whether it was turned on to alert the school or whether it was on for morning announcements, but the principal's screams and the cries of children heard throughout the school gave teachers time to take precautions to protect their children.


Hochsprung was among those killed in the Friday morning killing spree.


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


Authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview Lanza's relatives, ABC News has learned.


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 More..

CERN becomes first pure physics voice in UN chorus



Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

UNGA.jpg


(Image: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras)


If CERN observes the proceedings of the United Nations, will it change the outcome?


The international particle physics laboratory, based near Geneva, Switzerland, has been granted observer status in the General Assembly of the United Nations, CERN officials announced today. 

The lab joins environmental groups and public health agencies as the first physical sciences research organization in the ranks of UN observers. Observer status grants the right to speak at meetings, participate in procedural votes, and sign and sponsor resolutions, but not to vote on resolutions.

In some ways, CERN's addition seems a natural move - and a long time coming.





The facility was founded in 1954 under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Its initial mission was to provide collaborative projects for researchers from Allied countries and former Axis countries after the second World War.


Arguably the lab's most high-profile project, the Large Hadron Collider, made headlines worldwide this year when it revealed detection of a new particle that appears to be the elusive Higgs boson.


"Through its projects, which bring together scientists from all over the world, CERN also promotes dialogue between nations and has become a model for international cooperation," CERN states in a press release. The lab says it may use its new status with the UN to help shore up scientific education and technological capabilities in developing countries, particularly in Africa.


But just as observing a quantum particle can change its state, can CERN's involvement truly collapse the UN's wavefunction and trigger better global science and technology policies? Only time will tell.




Read More..

Football: Wenger lucky to avoid sack, says Wright






LONDON: Arsenal legend Ian Wright claims Gunners manager Arsene Wenger is lucky to still have a job because any other boss would have been sacked for going so long without success.

Wright, one of the club's all-time greats, has added his voice to the growing criticism of Wenger in the aftermath of Tuesday's humiliating League Cup quarter-final defeat at Bradford.

Wenger, 63, has not delivered a trophy since the FA Cup in 2005 and the dismal display against League Two minnows Bradford, which ended with a penalty shoot-out loss, has only increased Wright's belief that the Frenchman is losing his fight to stop Arsenal sliding into obscurity.

Wright, who played under Wenger at the end of his seven-year spell with Arsenal, claims his former boss is now living off past glories that will take years to recapture.

"I wouldn't say 'surely he has to go', but it is a unique position he's in because I think any manager in any country in any world with a record like this and no prospect of light at the end of the tunnel, they would've been gone," Wright told Absolute Radio's RocknRoll Football show.

"People are holding onto the fact to what Arsene has done, and people are saying he is going to tarnish what he has done, but I don't think that will ever happen.

"However, it is a long way back. I feel there are a lot of deluded Arsenal fans who are out in the wilderness still saying 'in Arsene we trust' and stuff like that."

Wenger is rightly regarded as Arsenal's greatest ever manager after leading the club to three Premier League titles, four FA Cup and a Champions League final during his 16-year reign, as well introducing an eye-catching style of play that became the envy of the rest of Europe for several years.

But there has been a gradual disintegration of Wenger's squad in recent years, with the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie all making moves to more successful clubs.

Wright, who lost his status as Arsenal's record goalscorer to Thierry Henry, believes Wenger needs to be more honest about the state of his squad rather than continually defending the indefensible.

"You hear him doing interviews afterwards saying, 'I have got a great team with a great spirit', but we are not seeing that," Wright added.

"He does not tell the truth for me, he does not say what is happening.

"What is going on? Have you got any money to spend or haven't you? Is it the fact the board are giving you the money and you are not spending? Is that too hard a question to answer for Arsenal?"

-AFP/ac



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Lingering issues found at Foxconn's iPhone factory



Construction near Foxconn's factory in Zhengzhou, China.

Construction near Foxconn's factory in Zhengzhou, China earlier this year.



(Credit:
Jay Greene/CNET)


Despite recent efforts to improve working conditions at Foxconn's factories, a new investigative report claims that there are still numerous issues.


The findings come inside a report by French TV program Envoyé Spécial, which yesterday aired hidden camera footage it captured at Foxconn's facility in Zhengzhou, which manufactures Apple's iPhone. It's also the same factory where a worker strike occurred two months ago.


Among the issues found by the group, as relayed by Engadget, were workers living in buildings that in the process of being built and were not quite finished, meaning those living there were without electricity or water. The reporters also met employees who claimed they were required to continue working there at the risk of losing their educational credentials.


CNET contacted Foxconn for comment on the report, and will update this post when we know more.


An Apple spokeswoman reiterated a statement the company made earlier this year:


Apple is committed to the highest standards of social responsibility across our worldwide supply chain. We insist that all of our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever our products are made.


Both Apple and Foxconn were put under intense scrutiny following a pair of investigative reports by The New York Times earlier this year. Those reports highlighted poor labor and safety issues in Apple's supplier facilities, as well as business practices that prohibited those manufacturers from making improvements. In its own annual supplier responsibility report, Apple said it found issues with working hours and compliance with environmental standards.



Since then, the Fair Labor Association -- which Apple became a member of in January -- published a report on Foxconn that found violations in wages and overtime, conditions that the Chinese manufacturing giant pledged to remedy with a deadline that goes into July of next year. In a follow-up, the group said Foxconn was actually ahead of schedule. Additionally, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to China, and visited the factories in person.


The report from Envoyé Spécial is the latest to claim that major issues persist. A report published in September by the Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior claimed that workers at Foxconn's Zhengzhou facility were still being forced to work overtime and experiencing numerous working violations. Foxconn said the report was not representative of the factory, which employed 192,000 workers at the time.


Here's the entire segment, split up into three parts, and in French:

Updated at 2:30 p.m. PT with comment from Apple and additional background.


Read More..

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

Read More..