Karzai leaves Afghanistan for US talks






KABUL: President Hamid Karzai on Monday left Afghanistan for talks with Barack Obama in Washington to focus on security in his war-torn country after NATO combat troops withdraw in 2014, his office said.

During his three-day official visit, a decision could be made on how many US troops will stay in Afghanistan after 2014, officials have said.

"President Karzai will hold separate meetings with President Barack Obama and other high-ranking US officials to discuss various key issues," Karzai's office said after his departure.

Talks will focus on security, economic and political transition, equipping and strengthening Afghan forces, efforts to negotiate peace with Taliban-led insurgents and a security agreement with the United States, it said.

Karzai has expressed support for keeping US troops in Afghanistan but sensitive details -- including immunity for American soldiers and the transfer of detainees into Afghan custody -- are still under negotiation.

The US Defense Department has reportedly prepared plans to leave roughly 3,000, 6,000 or 9,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

General John Allen, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, had earlier suggested leaving 6,000 to 20,000 US troops, US media reported.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the force would focus on preventing Al-Qaeda, which was sheltered by the 1996-2001 Taliban government, from regaining a foothold in Afghanistan.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a smaller US troop presence would force the State Department to cut plans for large-scale diplomatic outposts across Afghanistan.

-AFP/ac



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Delphi and Verizon partner on car tracking, remote unlocking



Delphi Connected Car

Connecting to a car's OBD2 port, this device enables remote functions and car tracking through a smartphone app.



(Credit:
Delphi)



With a black box the size of a pack of playing cards plugged into a car's OBD2 port, Delphi gives owners a variety of control and information features, from tracking to remotely locking and unlocking the doors. Delphi partnered with Verizon to offer the Connected Car device, which emulates many of the features available from modern telematics services.


After plugging the Delphi Connected
Car into a car's OBD2 port, which is usually located under the dashboard, a car owner will be able to download an app or use a Web portal, giving him a wide variety of control and information features.


The device includes a CDMA data connection to Verizon's cell network, along with Bluetooth. Connected to the OBD2 port, a standardized feature of any car built in 1996 or after, it reads vehicle codes and supports some control features. The device also contains a GPS chip, so can report its location through the Verizon data connection.


Features on the associated smartphone app that owners will find immediately useful read and interpret any error codes, things that might lead to a check engine warning light. The app can show the car's current fuel level, if the car supports that functionality, and other vehicle data, such as engine temperature.


Making use of the devices GPS chip and subsequent car location information, parents can get a warning when the car exceeds certain speeds or the engine rpms go over a certain level. Likewise, car owners can indicate geographical boundaries for the car, and get notified if someone drives the car beyond the approved range.


Particularly cautious parents can also initiate real-time tracking of the car, and view its progress on a map. That feature can also be used for stolen vehicle recovery. The app includes a 911 speed dial, so owners can alert police to the location of a stolen vehicle.


As a convenience feature, the app emulates the functions of an owner's key fob, such as remove lock and unlock, and car start. But unlike the fob, the connected nature of the device lets owners use these features from almost anywhere in the world. And when the car is deep in a parking garage, away from data connectivity, the Bluetooth connection allows the remote door unlock to work from short distances.


Verizon and Delphi partnered to build the Connected Car device, with Verizon building the hardware and Delphi maintaining the online vehicle services. The price has not been disclosed as of yet, but it will come with two years of data connectivity.


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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners









































































































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Pastor Accused of Killing Wives Faces Trial













Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday for Pastor Arthur Schirmer, who is accused of killing his second wife and then staging a car accident to hide it.


Schirmer, 64, also faces a second trial at a later date for the death of his first wife. He has said he is innocent of all charges.


In 2008, the pastor and his wife, Betty, were involved in what appeared at the time to be a car crash. Schirmer told police at the time that he had been driving 55 mph and swerved to miss a deer, causing him to drive off the road, according to a police affidavit obtained by ABC News.


Schirmer also said at the time that his wife's head had come forward and struck the windshield, according to the affidavit. Betty died a day later and her body was cremated at the request of Schirmer.


It wasn't until a grisly suicide in 2010 inside Schirmer's office that authorities decided to revisit the case of Betty Schirmer's death and arrest the pastor.


The man who broke in and shot himself at the desk in Schirmer's office at the Reeders United Methodist Church, Joseph Mustante, was the husband of the pastor's secretary, Cynthia Mustante, Poconos Township Police Detective James Wagner said.






Pocono Record, David Kidwell/AP Photo











Mustante's suicide was prompted by the discovery that his wife and the pastor had apparently been having an affair, Wagner said. He was alone at the time of his death.


Investigators looking into the suicide say that several church parishioners had concerns about the deaths of Schirmer's two wives.


"That suicide eventually exposed the affair publicly and subsequent to that, questions arose about the loss of [Schirmer's] wives and his character became questionable," Wagner said.


Relaunching the investigation into the two deaths, Wagner said he quickly suspected that "foul play existed, and the car crash was staged," allegedly, by Schirmer. Wagner said investigators also believed there was something "suspicious" about the first wife's death, a marriage that investigators had not known about prior to the suicide.

Investigators Look Into Deaths of Rev. Arthur Schirmer's Wives



Schirmer's first wife, Jewel, died in April 1999 from a traumatic brain injury after she purportedly fell down a flight of stairs in Lebanon, Pa., Wagner said.


Lebanon is about 100 miles southwest of Reeders, where Schrimer later moved with his second wife.


At the time of Jewel's death, Wagner said, a relative told police that he suspected Schirmer may have had a hand in his wife's death but that the investigation was "never completed."


On Dec. 11, 2012 -- more than 13 years after Jewel died, a Lebanon County judge ruled Schirmer would be tried for her murder.


When investigators looked at the death of Betty Schirmer, they saw inconsistencies, Wagner said.


"There was no airbag deployment and it simply looked like a car that had driven off the road at a very low speed," Wagner said. "It didn't match the injuries to [Betty's head].


"I know there are people out there who probably know him and feel like there is absolutely no way he would be capable of doing this," Wagner of Schirmer. "But they clearly don't know him."



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Silent Skype calls can hide secret messages









































Got a secret message to send? Say it with silence. A new technique can embed secret data during a phone call on Skype. "There are concerns that Skype calls can be intercepted and analysed," says Wojciech Mazurczyk at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland. So his team's SkypeHide system lets users hide extra, non-chat messages during a call.












Mazurczyk and his colleagues Maciej Karaƛ and Krysztof Szczypiorski analysed Skype data traffic during calls and discovered an opportunity in the way Skype "transmits" silence. Rather than send no data between spoken words, Skype sends 70-bit-long data packets instead of the 130-bit ones that carry speech.












The team hijacks these silence packets, injecting encrypted message data into some of them. The Skype receiver simply ignores the secret-message data, but it can nevertheless be decoded at the other end, the team has found. "The secret data is indistinguishable from silence-period traffic, so detection of SkypeHide is very difficult," says Mazurczyk. They found they could transmit secret text, audio or video during Skype calls at a rate of almost 1 kilobit per second alongside phone calls.












The team aims to present SkypeHide at a steganography conference in Montpellier, France, in June.


















































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.




































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Suu Kyi says any peace bid is up to Myanmar govt






YANGON: Myanmar democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday said she would not step in to help end worsening conflict between the army and ethnic Kachin rebels without government approval.

"It is up to the government. This case is being handled by the government at the moment," Suu Kyi told AFP when asked if she would get involved in efforts to resolve the fighting, after the army's use of air strikes drew international concern.

The Nobel laureate said she would need an official invitation to join peace negotiations aimed at quelling the raging civil war, which has overshadowed Myanmar's widely-praised political reforms.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the conflict in the far north since June 2011, when a 17-year ceasefire between the government and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) broke down.

Myanmar's quasi-civilian regime, which took power in 2011 at the end of junta rule, has reached tentative peace deals with other major ethnic rebel groups, but an agreement with the Kachin has proved elusive.

President Thein Sein, a former general, in December 2011 ordered an end to military offensives against the rebels and continued hostilities have led to doubts over his ability to control the powerful armed forces.

According to the English language state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Sunday, the Myanmar leader has instructed the military not to attack unless in "self-defence".

The report said Thein Sein urged "mutual trust" and "continued dialogue" in order to bring about peace.

Civil war has plagued parts of the country formerly known as Burma since it won independence from Britain in 1948.

Yup Zaw Hkaung, a local businessman and peace negotiator in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, on Saturday appealed for Suu Kyi's involvement in ending the fighting, which has intensified in recent weeks.

He said the democracy activist had a "responsibility" to work for ethnic peace.

Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner turned lawmaker, used her maiden speech to parliament in July last year to call for greater protection of ethnic minority rights.

But the veteran activist has disappointed rights campaigners by not speaking out more vocally in support of another minority group, the Rohingya, in the violence-torn western state of Rakhine.

- AFP/fa



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Nvidia at 2013 CES: Join us Sunday, 8 p.m. PT (live blog)


Nvidia starts the 2013 International CES early with a press conference at 8 p.m. PT (11 p.m. ET) on Sunday, Jan. 6, and CNET will be there to cover it live. We'll have a live video stream, along with a blog full of news and analysis, as it happens.

You can tune into the blog and video stream here:

CNET's live coverage of Nvidia's 2013 CES press conference

Nvidia has been pretty quiet about any possible announcements at
CES, but the graphics chipmaker is likely to talk up Tegra, its processor for mobile devices. The company has had some success getting the chip into
tablets over the past year, but it continues to struggle in smartphones. Nvidia is counting on its new integrated processor, which combines the apps processor with the wireless connectivity on the same piece of silicon, to change that.

An alleged leak about Nvidia's Tegra 4 from last month showed 72 graphics cores, six times as many as those found in the current-generation Tegra 3. That many cores would mean substantially improved performance for smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners









































































































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Gun Show Near Newtown Goes on Despite Anger













A little more than 40 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where last month 20 first graders and six staff members were massacred, gun dealers and collectors alike ignored calls to cancel a gun show, and gathered for business in Stamford, Conn.


Four other gun shows with an hour of Newtown, Conn., recently cancelled their events in the wake of the shootings, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza broke in to the elementary school with a semi-automatic assault rifle and three other guns.


The organizers in Stamford emphasized their show only displayed antique and collectible guns, not military style assault weapons like the one used by Lanza in Sandy Hook.


Still, Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia had called for the show to close its doors, calling it "insensitive" to hold so close to the murders.


Gun show participant Sandy Batchelor said he wasn't sure about whether going ahead with the show was "insensitive," but said the shooter should be blamed, not the weapons he used.


"I don't have a solid opinion on [whether it is insensitive]," Batchelor said. "I'm not for or against it. I would defend it by saying it wasnt the gun."


In nearby Waterbury, the community cancelled a show scheduled for this weekend.


"I felt that the timing of the gun show so close to that tragic event would be in bad taste," Waterbury Police Chief Chief Michael J. Gugliotti said.












National Rifle Association News Conference Interrupted by Protesters Watch Video





Gugliotti has halted permits for gun shows, saying he was concerned about firearms changing hands that might one day be used in a mass shooting.


Across the state line in White Plains, N.Y, Executive Rob Astorino also canceled a show, three years after ending a had that had been in place since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. He said he felt the show would be inappropriate now.


But across the country, farther away from Connecticut, attendance at gun shows is spiking, and some stores report they can hardly keep weapons on their shelves with some buyers fearful of that the federal government will soon increase restrictions on gun sales and possibly ban assault weapons altogether.


"We sold 50-some rifles in days," said Jonathan O'Connor, store manager of Gun Envy in Minnesota.


President Obama said after the Sandy Hook shooting that addressing gun violence would be one of his priorities and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would introduce an assault weapons ban this month.


But it is not just traditional advocates of gun control that have said their need to be changes in gun laws since the horrific school shooting.


Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat but a long-time opponent of gun control who like Hutchison has received an A rating from the NRA, have both come out in support of strengthening gun laws.


In Stamford, gun dealer Stuart English said participants at the gun show there are doing nothing wrong.


"I have to make a living. Life goes on," gun dealer Stuart English said.


ABC News asked English, what he thought about the mayor of Stamford calling the show "insensitive."


"He's wrong," English said. "This is a private thing he shouldn't be expressing his opinion on."


If you have a comment on this story or have a story idea, you can tweet this correspondent @greenblattmark.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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Graphic in-car crash warnings to slow speeding drivers



Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent


142093734.jpg

(Image: Cityscape/a.collection/Getty)


"You would die if you crashed right now." Would such a warning make you take your foot off the accelerator? That's the idea behind a scheme to warn drivers of the consequences of speeding developed by engineers at Japan's Fukuoka Institute of Technology and heavy goods vehicle maker UD Trucks, also in Japan. They are developing what they call a "safe driving promotion system" that warns drivers what kind of crash could ensue if they don't slow down.






Their patent-pending system uses the battery of radar, ultrasound sonar and laser sensors found in modern cars and trucks to work out the current kinetic energy of a vehicle. It also checks out the distance to the vehicle in front and keeps watch on its brake lights, too. An onboard app that has learned the driver's reaction time over all their previous trips then computes the likelihood of collision - and if the driver's speed is risky, it displays the scale of damage that could result.


The warning that flashes up could vary from something like a potential whiplash injury due to a rear-end shunt to a fatal, car-crushing collision with fire. The inventors hope this kind of in-car advice will promote safety more forcefully than current warning systems, which merely display the distance to the vehicle in front. "A sense of danger will be awakened in the driver that makes them voluntarily refrain from dangerous driving," they predict.




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