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. ...

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Egypt's Morsi annuls controversial decree

CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday annulled a decree he issued last month expanding his powers, an official told a Cairo news conference."The constitutional decree is annulled from this moment," said Selim al-Awa, an Islamist politician acting as spokesman of a meeting Morsi held earlier with other political leaders.A referendum on a draft constitution would however still...

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Apple's U.S. Mac-making plan to create 200 jobs, says report

Various industry watchers are weighing in on Apple CEO Tim Cook's remark this week that the company will invest $100 million into making Macs in the U.S., with some saying the move will create 200 new jobs.In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Cook was asked what it would take to get Apple back to building products in the states. Cook said, in part: "Next year we are going to bring some production...

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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...

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Dallas Cowboys Player Arrested in Teammate's Death

Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Joshua Price-Brent was arrested on an intoxication manslaughter charge today after a single vehicle roll-over killed his passenger, Jerry Brown Jr., who had been a linebacker on the team's practice squad and his former teammate at the University of Illinois.Price-Brent, 24, was allegedly speeding "well above" the posted 45 mph speed limit at about...

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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...

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Lagarde says 'fiscal cliff' threatens US supremacy

WASHINGTON: IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Friday the looming "fiscal cliff" in the United States threatens the country's international supremacy and the fragile global recovery.In an interview with BBC World News, Lagarde noted the US fiscal cliff, a combination of severe tax increases and spending cuts due in January, would probably wipe out growth in the world's largest economy."The...

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One way to tackle captive network connection errors in OS X

When you connect yourMac to a network, if you receive a proper configuration such as an IP address and DNS servers from your router then you should be able to use Mail,Safari, and other networking client programs to access various services either on the local network or through the Internet. However, sometimes it can happen that despite a seemingly healthy connection you aren't able to access Web...

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Pictures: Timbuktu Under al Qaeda

TimbuktuPhotograph by Brent Stirton, Getty Images/National GeographicSince the 12th century, when Tuareg tribes founded Timbuktu as a seasonal camp on the southern edge of...

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Supreme Court to Take Up Gay Marriage Cases

The Supreme Court today decided to take up two major cases regarding gay marriage, one of which could ultimately lead the court to decide whether there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage.The justices announced that the court would hear a challenge to Proposition 8, the controversial California ballot initiative that passed in 2008 that restricted marriage to opposite-sex...

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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...

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Sandy, cliff point to bleak November US jobs data

WASHINGTON: The powerful storm that landed a blow to the US economy last month and worries over the fast-approaching "fiscal cliff" point to a bleak November reading from the Labor Department on Friday.Superstorm Sandy, which pummeled the northeastern coast in late October and early November, shutting down New York and other major cities, was expected to slash job creation in half."The...

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Carrier Ting: Bring us your Sprint phones

The Motorola Photon 4G is one device you can bring to Ting's cell phone service.(Credit:Josh Miller/CNET)Today Ting, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that resells Sprint's network, launched a private beta that lets prospective customers sign up for Ting's service using their previously-purchased Sprint phones.For now, just seven devices make the cut:Ting says that they have thoroughly tested...

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High-Voltage DC Breakthrough Could Boost Renewable Energy

Patrick J. Kiger Thomas Edison championed direct current, or DC, as a better mode for delivering electricity than alternating current, or AC. But the inventor of the light bulb lost the War of the Currents. Despite Edison's sometimes flamboyant efforts—at one point he electrocuted a Coney Island zoo elephant in an attempt to show the technology's hazards—AC is the primary way that electricity...

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McAfee Mystery Deepens With Possible Heart Attack

Software millionaire John McAfee has been taken to a Guatemala City hospital via ambulance after suffering a possible heart attack at the detention center where he is being held.McAfee, 67 -- who may soon be deported back to Belize, where authorities want to question him about the shooting death of his neighbor -- was reportedly prostrate on the floor of his cell and unresponsive....

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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. ...

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Football: Champions League holders Chelsea out despite rout

LONDON: Chelsea became the first Champions League holders to go out in the group phase despite a resounding 6-1 win at home to FC Nordsjaelland in their final Group E game on Wednesday.The much-maligned Fernando Torres scored twice, with David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Juan Mata and Oscar also on target, but Juventus' 1-0 win at Shakhtar Donetsk in the other group game put the Italians in the...

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Sneaker Speaker: Put on your dancing shoes

Good luck being sneaky in these sneakers.(Credit:Ray Kingston Inc.)Despite the move to tiny portable music systems, some of us still long for the good old days of extremely noticeable boomboxes. You can indulge your nostalgia by dressing your iPhone up to look like one, or you could strap some wearable speakers to your feet.The Sneaker Speaker from New York design group Ray Kingston Inc. wraps a set...

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Giant Sequoias Grow Faster With Age

Aging giant sequoia trees are growing faster than ever, with some of the oldest and tallest trees producing more wood, on average, in old age than they did when they were younger. (Read about redwoods, another species of giant tree, in National Geographic magazine.)A 2,000-year-old giant sequoia is just cranking out wood, said Steve Sillett, a professor at Humboldt State University in...

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Obama Rejects GOP 'Doomsday' Plan

President Obama's lead negotiator in the "fiscal cliff" talks said the administration is "absolutely" willing to allow the package of deep automatic spending cuts and across-the-board tax hikes to take effect Jan. 1, unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher income tax rates on the wealthy.Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in an interview with CNBC that both...

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Today on New Scientist: 4 December 2012

'Magnetic highway' found at solar system's edge NASA's Voyager 1 has detected a zone where charged particles can race along magnetic field lines linking the solar system with interstellar spaceBack-to-basics money shot shows a cent's battle scars The euro has taken a bit of a battering of late - and not just in the financial markets. See how a 1-cent coin looks through a powerful microscopeBattling...

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Football: Real Madrid hit four as Ajax crumble

MADRID: Real Madrid made light work of Ajax with an emphatic 4-1 win on Tuesday, but still had to settle for second place in Champions League Group D.Goals from Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and a Jose Callejon double in the Santiago Bernabeu sealed the Spanish champions' victory, but top spot in the group went to Borussia Dortmund who beat Manchester City 1-0.Derk Boerrigter got the consolation...

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