Philippines' Aquino to visit rebel stronghold

MANILA: Philippine President Benigno Aquino will next week make a historic visit to the stronghold of the country's main Muslim rebel force in an effort to push forward peace talks, his office said on Thursday.Aquino's trip on Monday to the outskirts of the 12,000-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front's (MILF's) main base in the country's south will be the first peace mission there by a...

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Microsoft goes after Google with attack on Gmail privacy

Microsoft takes aim at Gmail.(Credit:Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)Microsoft is ratcheting up its attacks on Google with a campaign urging users of the Web giant's e-mail service to dump Gmail for its own Outlook.com over privacy concerns.In its national campaign titled "Don't get scroogled by Gmail," Microsoft dredges up an old issue with Google's free e-mail service: Google scans users' e-mails...

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Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and...

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Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to...

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Today on New Scientist: 5 February 2013

Engineering light: Pull an image from nowhere A new generation of lenses could bring us better lighting, anti-forgery technology and novel movie projectors Baby boomers' health worse than their parents Americans who were born in the wake of the second world war have poorer health than the previous generation at the same ageNew 17-million-digit monster is largest known prime A distributed computing...

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SSC may sell naming rights to facilities in Sports Hub

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Sports Council (SSC), which is developing the Sports Hub, may sell the naming rights to individual facilities within the complex, except for the National Stadium. However, any sale of naming rights within the Sports Hub is still subject to SSC's consent. The aim is to strike a balance between preserving the character of Singapore's national icons and allowing sports...

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Twitter gives Vine an NC-17 rating after porn controversy

Vine update ask for ID -- kind of.(Credit:Steven Musil/CNET)After a dustup over pornography showing up on Vine, the Twitter-owned video-sharing app has added an age rating for possible adult content.The app for iPhone and iPod Touch, which lets anyone create and share six-second clips, quickly became a popular venue for pornography after its release last month. Twitter responded by trying to make...

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues...

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Lance Armstrong Under Criminal Investigation

Federal investigators are in the midst of an active criminal investigation of disgraced former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, ABC News has learned.The revelation comes in stark contrast to statements made by the U.S. Attorney for Southern California, Andre Birotte, who addressed his own criminal inquiry of Armstrong for the first time publicly on Tuesday. Birotte's...

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Ice-age art hints at birth of modern mind

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editorFigurines from the Don river valley (Images: Kirstin Jennings)The world’s oldest portrait, the world’s first fully carved sculpture, the world's oldest ceramic figure, the world’s earliest puppet - there’s no shortage of superlatives in the new exhibition of art from the ice age at the British Museum in LondonBut focus too closely on the exhibits’ record-breaking ages...

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