Elon Musk: Mars base will open the way to other stars

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The SpaceX founder says he'd like to "die on Mars". Why the obsession with going to the Red Planet?











Why are you so keen to get humans to MarsMovie Camera?
Because this is the first time in 4 billion years of Earth's history that it has been possible. That window may be open for a long time - and I hope it is - but it may not be. We should take advantage just in case something bad happens. It wouldn't necessarily be that humanity gets eliminated; it could just be a drop in technology.













Why go to Mars, when advances in telepresent robotics could give us all the physical sensations of being there?
Maybe I'm just being romantic but I do think there is some value to being there in person. We can learn a lot from robotics but it is no substitute for being there. And having a base on Mars, where there is a lot of travel to and from Earth, will create a powerful incentive for developing technology that will enable us to travel to other star systems.











Like the exoplanet recently found in Alpha Centauri 4 light years away?
I think you could figure out how to get there. With a nuclear thermal rocket you could definitely reach a tenth of the speed of light. It would take 40 years, though, which is a long time. You'd have to start off not too old if you wanted to see it.













What could change that?
There are some interesting things I've seen lately about warp drives. You can't exceed the speed of light but you can warp space and effectively travel many times the speed of light. That's kind of exciting. People have found increasingly smarter ways of minimising the energy required [to warp space]. Before, you would need the mass-energy of Jupiter.












Is a warp drive something that SpaceX, your space exploration company, could use?
Sure we'd love to have a warp drive. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.












As a pioneer, is it nerve-wracking to know that the world is watching you and SpaceX?
I'm getting more comfortable with it. It was super-white knuckles in the beginning. We made many mistakes. We only made orbit on the fourth flight. We reached the edge of space on flights 2 and 3, but didn't have enough velocity. If flight 4 hadn't worked, it would have been curtains for SpaceX.












Your Dragon capsule has just returned cargo from the International Space Station. When will you start taking astronauts?
We're hoping to do our first flight with people in three years. Actually, if somebody were to stowaway on the present version of Dragon they'd be able to go to the space station and be fine.












Will you be on the first crewed flight?
It's really up to NASA, our customer. I used to do quite dangerous things, like flying a fighter jet at low altitude. Then I had kids and companies and I want to see them grow up, so I've curtailed my dangerous activities. I'd like to go up, but I won't be the first. The very first flight will be on automatic pilot, so there will be no people on board.


























































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Indian factory index at five-month high: HSBC

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MUMBAI: India's manufacturing activity rose in November to its fastest pace in five months led by a rise in new orders, a private business survey showed on Monday.

The Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) from HSBC India Manufacturing, which gives a snapshot of manufacturing health from output to jobs, climbed to 53.7 in November, compared to 52.9 in the previous month.

A figure of over 50 indicates growth in the sector while below 50 points to contraction.

"The manufacturing sector gained momentum thanks to a strong pick up in new orders, which lifted output growth," said HSBC chief economist Leif Eskesen.

The survey's findings -- based on data from more than 500 manufacturers -- come after India's economic growth eased to 5.3 per cent in the July-September quarter, extending a slowdown since the start of the year.

The survey showed that both input and output prices rose sharply in November.

"Inflation picked up again as higher raw material prices increased input costs for firms," Eskesen said, adding that data suggests the country's Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would continue to abstain from easing its monetary policy.

Indian inflation was at 7.45 per cent in October, still well above the central bank's comfort zone of around five per cent.

The RBI has kept its benchmark interest rate on hold since April due to inflationary pressures, disappointing government and business leaders who want a cut to boost the economy.

- AFP/jc



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Election, iPhone 5 top Yahoo's list of 2012's popular searches

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The iPhone 5 was one of the most searched terms this year.



(Credit:
CBS Interactive)

The
iPhone 5 couldn't quite edge out the election to be No. 1 on Yahoo's list of most-searched terms for 2012. But it came pretty close.

Yahoo today released its data for the most-searched terms in 2012. The lists include information on "obsessions" (viral sensations), memes, gadgets, Olympians, sports teams, songs/music lyrics, TV comedies, "what is" searches, how-to searches, recipes, and several others.

At the top of the list of terms most searched overall, unsurprisingly, was "election," followed by iPhone 5. Rounding out the top five were Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton, and Kate Middleton.

As Yahoo noted, politics saturated news headlines and ads, but people still searched online to see what was happening in the presidential election, as well as their own state and local races. As for the iPhone, anticipation for the device kept it toward the top of the list.

"iPhone was No. 1 last year, and the fact the iPhone made it back on the list is incredible," Vera Chan, a Yahoo Web trend analyst, told CNET.

It did end up the top-searched gadget of the year, followed by iPad 3,
iPad Mini, Samsung Galaxy S3, and
Kindle Fire. Interestingly, iPhone 4 nabbed the No. 6 spot.

Kim Kardashian, meanwhile, reached the height of her popularity as the most searched person on Yahoo. She has been a staple in the Top 10 since 2009, the site noted.

Some of the top obsessions, or searches that became viral, in order, are iPhone 5, political polls, Mega Millions, The Hunger Games, and Honey Boo Boo. And the top-searched memes were Kony 2012, binders full of women, Hurricane Sandy fake storm photos, ridiculously photogenic guy, and Big Bird.

Search rankings from other sites have also been released in the past couple weeks. Microsoft's Bing search engine deemed the iPhone 5 to be the most searched for news story of the year. The debut of the device beat out the 2012 presidential election, the Olympics, and Superstorm Sandy, which followed respectively for the next top searches. The Honey Boo Boo reality TV show came in at No. 5 on Bing.

Over at Ask.com, most people wanted to know if Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were getting back together.

The site also noted that the iPhone 5 may "have made big waves in the press, but it barely registered a ripple among U.S. adults." It said 49 percent of people surveyed said they don't see a big difference between the iPhone 5 and the previous version of the smartphone.

Here's the top 10 searches overall from Yahoo:

  1. Election

  2. iPhone 5

  3. Kim Kardashian

  4. Kate Upton

  5. Kate Middleton

  6. Whitney Houston

  7. Olympics

  8. Political polls

  9. Lindsay Lohan

  10. Jennifer Lopez


And here are the top-searched gadgets:

  1. iPhone 5

  2. iPad 3

  3. iPad Mini

  4. Samsung Galaxy S3

  5. Kindle Fire

  6. iPhone 4

  7. Nook

  8. iPod Touch

  9. Samsung Galaxy Tab

  10. Samsung Galaxy Note

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Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

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Boehner on Fiscal Cliff Talks: 'You Can't Be Serious'

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President Obama and his White House team appear to have drawn a line in the sand in talks with House Republicans on the "fiscal cliff."


Tax rates on the wealthy are going up, the only question is how much?


"Those rates are going to have to go up," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flatly stated on ABC's "This Week." "There's no responsible way we can govern this country at a time of enormous threat, and risk, and challenge ... with those low rates in place for future generations."


But the president's plan, which Geithner delivered last week, has left the two sides far apart.


In recounting his response today on "Fox News Sunday," House Speaker John Boehner said: "I was flabbergasted. I looked at him and said, 'You can't be serious.'


"The president's idea of negotiation is: Roll over and do what I ask," Boehner added.


The president has never asked for so much additional tax revenue. He wants another $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, including returning the tax rate on income above $250,000 a year to 39.6 percent.






TOBY JORRIN/AFP/Getty Images















Obama Balances Fiscal Cliff, Defense Department Appointment Watch Video





Boehner is offering half that, $800 billion.


In exchange, the president suggests $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and other programs. House Republicans say that is not enough, but they have not publicly listed what they would cut.


Geithner said the ball is now in the Republicans' court, and the White House is seemingly content to sit and wait for Republicans to come around.


"They have to come to us and tell us what they think they need. What we can't do is to keep guessing," he said.


The president is also calling for more stimulus spending totaling $200 billion for unemployment benefits, training, and infrastructure projects.


"All of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table," Boehner said.


Boehner also voiced some derision over the president's proposal to strip Congress of power over the country's debt level, and whether it should be raised.


"Congress is not going to give up this power," he said. "It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone."


The so-called fiscal cliff, a mixture of automatic tax increases and spending cuts, is triggered on Jan. 1 if Congress and the White House do not come up with a deficit-cutting deal first.


The tax increases would cost the average family between $2,000 and $2,400 a year, which, coupled with the $500 billion in spending cuts, will most likely put the country back into recession, economists say.



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Weaver ants help flowers get the best pollinator

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MOST flowers don't want pesky ants hanging around scaring away would-be pollinators. Not so the Singapore rhododendron - the first flower found to recruit ants to chase poor pollinators away.












Francisco Gonzálvez at EEZA, the arid zone experimental station in Almeria, Spain, and colleagues studied flowers frequented by large carpenter bees (Xylocopa) and a much smaller solitary bee, Nomia. The larger bees seemed to be better pollinators - setting far more fruit than the smaller bees.












The team found that Nomia avoided plants with weaver ant patrols, and when they did dare to land, were chased away or ambushed by the ants. Being so much bigger, carpenter bees weren't troubled by the ants (Journal of Ecology, DOI:10.1111/1365-2745.12006).












Plants usually produce chemical repellents to scare off insects that prey on their pollinators. But lab tests suggested Gonzálvez's flowers were actively attracting weaver ants, although how remains a mystery. The team thinks carpenter bees choose flowers with ants so they don't have to compete with Nomia.












Michael Kaspari of the University of Oklahoma in Norman says this is a new kind of plant-ant interaction, and that the team makes a "strong case" for the rhododendron manipulating the behaviour of weaver ants to ward off inefficient pollinators.


















































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China jails local government "interceptors": report

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BEIJING: A Chinese court handed jail terms to 10 "interceptors" for illegally imprisoning citizens hoping to lodge complaints with the central government, state media said Sunday.

The 10 were imprisoned after they illegally detained people from the central province of Henan who had travelled to Beijing to complain about local government abuses, the state-run Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Under China's long-standing "petitioning" system, people can request that the central government step in to investigate abuses by local officials at a dedicated complaints office in the Chinese capital.

But the officials, eager to protect their reputations, often employ "interceptors" to catch petitioners and detain them in secret facilities known as "black jails" to prevent them from lodging complaints.

A Beijing court handed down sentences ranging from several months to a year-and-a-half in prison for "illegal imprisonment", the first time such workers have been sentenced in the capital, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

Petitioners said the interceptors wore badges showing their affiliation with the Henan government and detained them in a facility run by Henan officials in Beijing, where they were also beaten, according to the report.

Despite years of calls for China to shut down its "black jails", rights groups continue to report frequent cases of petitioners being illegally detained and physically assaulted.

- AFP/xq



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McAfee nabbed? His blog says maybe, following CNN interview

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The bizarre real-life potboiler concerning on-the-lam antivirus-software pioneer John McAfee continued today, as -- following a cloak-and-dagger CNN interview with the fugitive -- McAfee's own blog posted an item saying he may have been captured at the Belize-Mexico border.


The item, pictured above and reported earlier by news agency AFP, says little more than that and calls the report of the capture "unconfirmed." We'll update this post -- or link to a new, separate story -- when we know more.



Earlier, CNN managed to track McAfee down for an on-camera interview somewhere in his longtime country of residence, Belize -- where he's in hiding after his neighbor was shot to death. A CNN article accompanying an online video of the interview says its reporter had to provide a secret password and partake in a secret-agent-like, twisting-and-turning
car ride to get to the millionaire turned mystery man.


In the brief interview, which you can check out here, McAfee says, "I will certainly not turn myself in, and I will certainly not quit fighting. I will not stop my blog." He says he'll either get arrested or get away and clarifies that "Get away doesn't mean leave the country. It means they will, No. 1, find the murderer of Mr. Faull and, No. 2, the people of this country -- who are by and large terrified to speak out -- start speaking out,"


McAfee has been on the run since November 12, when his neighbor Gregory Faull was discovered with a bullet in his head. McAfee and Faull had reportedly had run-ins with each other over McAfee's dogs and armed security guards. In an interview with Wired that same day, McAfee said he thought the killers had actually been looking for him and not Faull.


Other aspects of the tale include the fact that the 67-year-old McAfee's home was raided in May and that police said they found multiple unlicensed firearms and McAfee with a 17-year-old girl. They also said he was manufacturing an antibiotic in his home without a license. McAfee's blog provides another unusual twist. Apparently begun about a week after Faull's murder, it includes entries from McAfee himself about his flight. In one such post, McAfee writes that he is traveling with a 20-year-old woman named Samantha, whom he credits with helping to keep him fed, clothed, and in hiding:



"She has also helped me evade detection by grabbing me and kissing me, in public, in a fashion that causes passerby's to feel embarrassment at the thought of staring and by creating emotional scenes that cause the curious to momentarily forget what they were looking for," he wrote. "She is acutely aware of her surroundings and is as street smart as a sober hobo."


Today's CNN report noted that police in Belize have said they don't consider McAfee a suspect in the killing; they want him only for questioning. The news agency also noted that McAfee maintains that his troubles began when he refused to bribe a government official and that he will be killed if he's arrested.


Again, the post on McAfee's whoismcafee.com/The Hinterland blog says the report of McAfee's capture is unconfirmed, so it remains to be seen if it turns out to be true. If nothing else, however, the post adds yet another chapter to this strangely unfolding tale.


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Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

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Wikileaks Case: Guards Deny Intimidating Manning

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gty bradley manning dm 121108 wblog Bradley Mannings Former Guards Testify About Controversial Incident

(Brendan Smialkowski/AFP/Getty Images)


Bradley Manning’s former guards testified today that they did not intimidate the man accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrets website Wikileaks during  a Jan. 18, 2011 incident that resulted in Manning being placed on a temporary suicide risk watch.


Manning’s attorneys cite the event as a key reason why his pre-trial confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., was unlawful and warrants the dismissal of the charges against him.


Manning faces life imprisonment on charges that he leaked the classified military and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.  Details of those charges will come at a trial scheduled for February and are not being discussed at this week’s hearing, which is focused on his nine-month confinement at Quantico from July 2010 to April 2011.


On Jan. 18, 2011 Manning was being moved to his daily “recreation call” in a room at the brig when he experienced an apparent anxiety attack.  Manning said Thursday the guards escorting him seemed to have an aggressive attitude that made him feel nervous and ultimately feel faint.


Manning testified Thursday that he “lost my demeanor” during a later discussion with brig officials about the incident that led them to place him on temporary suicide risk watch.


Former Marine guards Lance Corporal Joshua Tankersly and Lance Corporal Jonathan Cline testified today that Manning had been moving around while his hand and leg restraints were placed on him for the escort to the exercise room.  They said they reminded Manning that he should respond properly to their orders by referring to their ranks when he answered them.


When Manning entered the recreation room they described a situation in which Manning fell backwards and landed on his backside.


They then said that when out of his leg restraints Manning ran to a weightlifting machine, hid behind it and began to cry.  Both Cline and Tankersly said they could not explain Manning’s behavior.  Both guards were ordered to leave the room and were replaced by two other guards who escorted Manning back to his cell.


Cline said he was puzzled when a supervisor later told him “we intimidated him or something like that.”


Each guard said he could not recall if they sounded harsh when they talked to Manning on the way to the exercise room.


They both said that aside from the January incident, Manning was courteous and professional in his interactions with them.  Both described him as an average prisoner, though Tankersly acknowledged that Manning was a high profile detainee who had the attention of high-ranking officials at the base.


“It’s hard to put ‘average’ on such a high profile, when you have higher ups on base come and check through to that see all was OK,” Tankersly said.


Gunnery Sgt. William Fuller, one of the senior officers at the brig, also testified today about his participation in a Classification and Assessment board that routinely assessed whether Manning’s Maximum Custody and Prevention of Injury status should be downgraded. The board never reduced Manning’s status during his stay.


Fuller acknowledged that before the January incident he and another brig official had considered a downgrade because Manning was “doing pretty good.”


He said the Jan. 18incident “kind of reset things … we had to keep him on Prevention of Injury.”


Fuller also cited Manning’s quiet interactions with him as a reason for keeping Manning on that status.


According to Fuller “he wouldn’t communicate … it seemed like he didn’t really want to talk” and that concerned him, given training he had received that being withdrawn could be an indicator of suicidal behavior.


Fuller admitted that the conversations were really just quick interactions to see how Manning was doing..  When asked to provide examples of longer exchanges he had with other prisoners, Fuller provided brief sentences.  That led David Coombs, Manning’s defense attorney to say sarcastically, “so if he’d thrown in more words then he would have classified as a Chatty Patty?”


Manning’s attorneys claim that a protest on Jan. 17 by Manning supporters, at the entrance to the base, may have motivated an aggressive attitude towards the detainee.


Cline recalled other guards “were annoyed” by the protest” because it would close parts of the base and hinder or interrupt how they got home.”  But Tankersly said the protest had no impact on Manning’s treatment.

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