Get cirrus in the fight against climate change

FEATHERY cirrus clouds are beautiful, but when it comes to climate change, they are the enemy. Found at high-altitude and made of small ice crystals, they trap heat - so more cirrus means a warmer world. Now it seems that, by destroying cirrus, we could reverse all the warming Earth has experienced so far.

In 2009, David Mitchell of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, proposed a radical way to stop climate change: get rid of some cirrus. Now Trude Storelvmo of Yale University and colleagues have used a climate model to test the idea.

Storelvmo added powdered bismuth triiodide into the model's troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which these clouds form. Ice crystals grew around these particles and expanded, eventually falling out of the sky, reducing cirrus coverage. Without the particles, the ice crystals remained small and stayed up high for longer.

The technique, done on a global scale, created a powerful cooling effect, enough to counteract the 0.8 °C of warming caused by all the greenhouse gases released by humans (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50122).

But too much bismuth triiodide made the ice crystals shrink, so cirrus clouds lasted longer. "If you get the concentrations wrong, you could get the opposite of what you want," says Storelvmo. And, like other schemes for geoengineering, side effects are likely - changes in the jet stream, say.

Different model assumptions give different "safe" amounts of bismuth triiodide, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. "Do we really know the system well enough to be confident of being in the safe zone?" he asks. "You wouldn't want to touch this until you knew."

Mitchell says seeding would take 140 tonnes of bismuth triiodide every year, which by itself would cost $19 million.

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Voters decided WP is better party to serve them: Ng Eng Hen

SINGAPORE: Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen said voters of Punggol East have decided that the Workers' Party (WP) is the better party to serve them.

Dr Ng, who is also a Member of Parliament (MP) of Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, described this as democracy.

He pointed out that voters in his GRC decided in previous elections that the People's Action Party (PAP) is the better party to serve them.

Dr Ng said he and fellow Bishan-Toa Payoh MPs take this very seriously and will continue to serve residents.

He said this in response to questions from reporters on the win by WP's Lee Li Lian in the Punggol East by-election on January 26.

Ms Lee won 54.5 per cent of the valid votes while the PAP's Dr Koh Poh Koon had 43.7 per cent.

Dr Ng said the lesson for him and his fellow MPs of Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC is very clear.

Once voters decide which party can serve them better, their faith is entrusted in the party and they have to work very hard to serve the residents.

Responding to questions on whether the by-election outcome is a report card of the PAP's performance, Dr Ng said this is a by-election in just one constituency.

He said it should not make a difference - whether or not it's a report card, as MPs must continue to work hard to serve residents.

Asked about the point made by WP chief Low Thia Khiang that a stronger opposition presence in Parliament would make the government work harder, Dr Ng replied that he has been an MP of Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC for 11 years and added MPs continue to serve "week in and week out".

He added that voters of Bishan-Toa Payoh are the prime motivators to ensure that MPs help make their lives better.

Dr Ng, who spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a community event on Sunday morning, also congratulated Ms Lee on her win.

- CNA/fa

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Anonymous: U.S. justice system has 'crossed a line'

A screenshot at 3:35 a.m. ET on January 26, 2013, of the homepage of the United States federal sentencing website after it had been hacked by a group that identified itself as "Anonymous."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. Sentencing Commission website restored


• The FBI is handling the incident as a "criminal investigation"


• Hackers say they have a file of incriminating information ready to launch


• The threat note cited anger over the death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz

(CNN) -- In anger over the recent death of an Internet activist who faced federal charges, hackers claiming to be from the group Anonymous threatened early Saturday to release sensitive information about the U.S. Department of Justice.

They claimed to have one such file on multiple servers ready for immediate release.

The hackers hijacked the website of the U.S. government agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines, where they posted a message demanding the United States reform its justice system or face incriminating leaks to select news outlets.

The lengthy, eloquently written letter was signed "Anonymous."

Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said the bureau was immediately aware of the threat and is "handling it as a criminal investigation."

"We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person('s) or government agency's network," he said.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission said its website was brought down "temporarily" before it was restored later Saturday. "The commission's publications, training materials and federal sentencing statistics are again readily accessible to visitors to the site," it said in a statement.

The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz on January 11 triggered the posting of the hackers' message to the web address of the sentencing commission, they said.

His death, which they blamed on the justice system, "crossed a line," the letter said.

How Aaron Swartz helped build the Internet

A YouTube video accompanied the message, and made use of images from Cold War nuclear scenarios and games of strategy. The letter contained nuclear metaphors to refer to chunks of embarrassing information.

The hackers said they have obtained "enough fissile material for multiple warheads," which it would launch against the Justice Department and "its associated executive branches."

It gave the "warheads" the names of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

'Anonymous' threatens Westboro Baptist

Anonymous accused the FBI of infiltrating its ranks and claimed the federal government is applying "highly disproportionate sentencing" to ruin the lives of some of its members.

Swartz, 26, was facing federal computer fraud charges and could have served 35 years in prison. Anonymous said he "was killed," because he "faced an impossible choice."

His family has issued a statement saying that federal charges filed over allegations that he stole millions of online documents contributed to Swartz's decision to take his own life. The files were mostly scholarly papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Opinion: Why the Net grieves Aaron Swartz

Swartz's suicide has inspired a flurry of online tributes and mobilized Anonymous, the loosely defined collective of so-called "hacktivists" who oppose attempts to limit Internet freedoms. Both Swartz and Anonymous have been stark proponents of open access to information and open-source programming.

A review of a cached version of the USSC.gov website showed the Anonymous message on its homepage early Saturday.

Anonymous also posted an editable version of the website, inviting users to deface it as they pleased. Multiple pages -- not only the home page -- appeared to allow users to alter them.

The "warhead" names appeared as links, most leading to 404 error messages of pages not found, but some leading to pages of raw programming code.

The hackers said they chose the commission's website because of its influence on the doling out of sentences they consider to be unfair.

CNN's Carol Cratty, Jason Moon, AnneClaire Stapleton contributed to this report

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At least 5 die in Chicago shootings

CHICAGO Authorities are investigating the shooting deaths of five people in a single day of bloodshed in Chicago.

Police Officer Daniel O'Brien says Saturday's first killing occurred at around 2:15 a.m. on the city's west side when a gunman opened fire on two men who were sitting in a parked car, killing one and wounding the other.

Investigators say a few hours later, someone opened fire on three men near a South Side eatery, killing two of them and wounding the third.

Detectives were called to the scene of another shooting Saturday afternoon in which a man in his 30s and a teenager were shot to death. There had been no arrests.

Chicago's homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008.

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Squatter, Bank of America Battle for $2.5M Mansion

Bank of America is taking a Florida man to court after he attempted to use an antiquated state law to legally take possession of a $2.5 million mansion that is currently owned by the bank.

Andre "Loki" Barbosa has lived in a five-bedroom Boca Raton, Fla., waterside property since July, and police have reportedly been unable to remove him.

The Brazilian national, 23, who reportedly refers to himself as "Loki Boy," cites Florida's "adverse possession" law, in which a party may acquire title from another by openly occupying their land and paying real property tax for at least seven years.

The house is listed as being owned by Bank of America as of July 2012, and that an adverse possession was filed in July. After Bank of America foreclosed on the property last year, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's Office was notified that Barbosa would be moving in, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The Sun-Sentinel reported that he posted a notice in the front window of the house naming him as a "living beneficiary to the Divine Estate being superior of commerce and usury."
On Facebook, a man named Andre Barbosa calls the property "Templo de Kamisamar."

After Barbosa gained national attention for his brazen attempt, Bank of America filed an injunction on Jan. 23 to evict Barbosa and eight unidentified occupants.

In the civil complaint, Bank of America said Barbosa and other tenants "unlawfully entered the property" and "refused to permit the Plaintiff agents entry, use, and possession of its property." In addition to eviction, Bank of America is asking for $15,000 in damages to be paid to cover attorney's expenses.

Police were called Dec. 26 to the home but did not remove Barbosa, according to the Sentinel. Barbosa reportedly presented authorities with the adverse possession paperwork at the time.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Povery Law Center, says police officers may be disinclined to take action even if they are presented with paperwork that is invalid.

"A police officer walks up to someone who is claiming a house now belongs to him, without any basis at all, is handed a big sheaf of documents, which are incomprehensible," Potok said. "I think very often the officers ultimately feel that they're forced to go back to headquarters and try to figure out what's going on before they can actually toss someone in the slammer."

A neighbor of the Boca property, who asked not be named, told ABCNews.com that he entered the empty home just before Christmas to find four people inside, one of whom said the group is establishing an embassy for their mission, and that families would be moving in and out of the property. Barbosa was also among them.

The neighbor said he believes that Barbosa is a "patsy."

"This young guy is caught up in this thing," the neighbor said. "I think it's going on on a bigger scale."

Barbosa could not be reached for comment.

The neighbor said that although the lights have been turned on at the house, the water has not, adding that this makes it clear it is not a permanent residence. The neighbor also said the form posted in the window is "total gibberish," which indicated that the house is an embassy, and that those who enter must present two forms of identification, and respect the rights of its indigenous people.

"I think it's a group of people that see an opportunity to get some money from the bank," the neighbor said. "If they're going to hold the house ransom, then the bank is going to have to go through an eviction process.

"They're taking advantage of banks, where the right hand doesn't know where the left hand is," the neighbor said. "They can't clap."

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Today on New Scientist: 25 January 2013

Hagfish gulped up in first video of deep-sea seal hunt

Watch the first sighting of a seal's underwater eating habits spotted by a teenager watching a live video feed

World's oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind

A 26,000-year-old carved ivory head of a woman is not just an archaeological find - a new exhibition in London wants us to see works like this as art

Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way

Forget the Pole Star: on moonless nights dung beetles use the Milky Way to follow a straight path with their dung ball

Stress's impact can affect future generations' genes

DNA analysis has yielded the first direct evidence that chemical marks which disable genes in response to stress can be passed on to offspring

Uncharted territory: Where digital maps are leading us

The way we use maps is evolving fast, says Kat Austen, and it will change a great deal more than how we navigate

Feedback: Tales of the stony turd industry

Fossilised faeces in Shitlington, confusing railway notices, organic water, and more

Duolingo gives language learning a jump start

First evidence that Duolingo, a new website that helps you learn a language while translating the web, actually works

Dolphins form life raft to help dying friend

A group of dolphins was caught on camera as they worked together to keep a struggling dolphin above water by forming an impromptu raft

Zoologger: Supercool squirrels go into the deep freeze

Hibernating Arctic ground squirrels drop their body temperatures to -4 °C, and shut their circadian clocks off for the winter

Greek economic crisis has cleared the air

The ongoing collapse of Greece's economy has caused a significant fall in air pollution, which can be detected by satellites

Body armour to scale up by mimicking flexible fish

Armour that is designed like the scales of the dragon fish could keep soldiers protected - while still letting them bend

Astrophile: Split personality tarnishes pulsars' rep

Pulsars were seen as cosmic timekeepers, but the quirky way in which one example shines suggests we can't take their behaviour for granted

Shrinking proton puzzle persists in new measurement

The most precise experiment yet to find the proton's radius confirms that it can appear smaller than our theories predict - is new physics needed?

Tight squeeze forces cells to take their medicine

A short sharp squash in these channels and a cell's membrane pops open - good news when you want to slip a molecule or nanoparticle in there

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ANA to cancel more Dreamliner flights

TOKYO: Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) plans to cancel at least 379 flights in February due to the worldwide grounding of Boeing's Dreamliner, local media reported on Saturday.

The cancellations, which include 245 flights on domestic routes over 12 days from February 1 and 134 on international routes over 18 days, are expected to affect some 24,300 passengers, Jiji Press and Kyodo News said.

The total number of ANA cancellations since a January 16 emergency landing in western Japan will now amount to 838, with 82,620 travellers affected, Jiji said.

International flights expected to be hit next month will include those from Tokyo's Haneda and Narita airports to Frankfurt, San Jose, Seattle and Seoul.

Boeing's cutting-edge new planes suffered a series of glitches earlier this month, prompting a global alert from the US Federal Aviation Administration that led to the worldwide grounding of all 50 operational 787s.

- AFP/fa

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RNC chief 'intrigued' by proposed electoral change

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: A spokesman for the Virginia governor says he does not support the proposal


• GOP state legislatures consider changing how they allocate electoral votes


• The proposed changes would have hurt President Obama in last year's election


• A similar push followed the hotly contested 2000 presidential election

Washington (CNN) -- If at first you don't succeed, try to change the rules.

A proposal under consideration in Virginia's Republican-led state Legislature would change how the commonwealth allocates its 13 electoral votes in the wake of Democratic President Barack Obama's re-election last November.

Obama won the popular vote in the crucial battleground state to claim all 13 electoral votes, even though GOP challenger Mitt Romney beat him in seven of the 11 congressional districts.

Under the proposed alternative system, electoral votes would get divvied up by congressional districts won. In addition, Virginia's two other electoral votes -- one for each U.S. Senate seat -- would go to the candidate who won the most congressional districts.

If the district-based system had been in effect in Virginia last year, Romney would have gotten nine electoral votes to four for Obama.

Jindal urges GOP to stop being 'stupid'

While a subcommittee has advanced the Virginia proposal, skepticism expressed by some GOP state senators raised doubts that it would proceed any further.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, does not support the plan, according to his spokesman.

"He believes Virginia's existing system works just fine as it is. He does not believe there is any need for a change," Tucker Martin said in statement.

However, Reince Priebus, newly re-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the idea worth examining.

"I think it is a state issue, but personally I'm pretty intrigued by it," he told reportersFriday.

Opinion: Where the stupidity really lies

The state party chairman in Florida, Lenny Curry, questioned the wisdom of such a move at a time when the party is trying to broaden its support.

"It seems to me we ought to be focused on connecting with voters and bringing them into our party versus trying to change the game," Curry said.

To Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, the concept doesn't violate democratic principles, but he called it a bad idea.

"Close elections would likely always result in extensive recounts, we could see huge disparities between the popular and electoral vote, and the partisan motive behind it would be transparent," he wrote Friday on the group's website.

Currently, only Nebraska and Maine use a district-based plan for allocating electoral votes.

Their systems differ from the Virginia proposal by awarding the two additional electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, rather than who won the most districts. Last year, both split their electoral votes between Obama and Romney.

Other GOP-controlled state legislatures reportedly contemplating changes to their electoral vote allocation include Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Under the Electoral College system, each state is worth a certain number of electoral votes based on population. Winning the presidency requires a majority of the electoral vote, regardless of who wins the popular vote.

States have the power to decide how their electoral votes get allocated, the National Conference of State Legislatures noted on its website.

It cited a similar push for change after the 2000 election, when Democratic Vice President Al Gore won the national popular vote but lost the electoral vote, and therefore the decision, to Republican George W. Bush.

From 2001 to 2006, bills proposing adoption of the district system were introduced in many states, but failed to pass, according to the NCSL website. Both Maine and Nebraska adopted their district-based systems before 2000.

The issue reflects the regionalization of America's deep partisan divide, with splits in many states between populous urban areas that tend to be more liberal and larger, less populated rural areas that generally are more conservative.

In Virginia, Obama got strong support in two heavily populated northern districts close to Washington as well as a district that includes much of Richmond and Norfolk. Romney won more rural districts in the central, southern and western parts of the state.

Overall in Virginia, Obama got 51% of the total vote -- more than 1.97 million -- compared to Romney's 1.82 million for 47% of the total.

CNN's Mark Preston and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

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Notre Dame president defends handling of Te'o case

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Top administrators at Notre Dame decided within hours of hearing about the Manti Te'o dead girlfriend hoax that it did not involve a crime and within two days had concluded there was no NCAA violation, according to a letter sent by the university president to board of trustee members on Friday.

The Rev. John Jenkins told trustees that despite "the unrelenting scrutiny of hundreds of journalists and countless others — and repeated attempts by some to create a different impression- no facts relating to the hoax have been at odds with what Manti told us" on Dec. 27-28.

The letter was obtained Friday by The Associated Press from a university official who provided it on condition of anonymity because the private school's internal workings are confidential.

The eight-page document, including a four-page letter from Jenkins and a four-page outline of how Notre Dame handled the hoax, is both a defense and an explanation of the school's actions.

"We did our best to get to the truth in extraordinary circumstances, be good stewards of the interests of the university and its good name and — as we do in all things — to make the well-being of our students one of our very highest priorities," Jenkins concluded in his letter.

Some of the timeline Notre Dame outlined is well known, including that its star linebacker disclosed the scam to his coaches the day after Christmas and it remained unknown to the public until Deadspin.com broke the story on Jan. 16, long after the Fighting Irish lost the BCS championship to Alabama on Jan. 7.

Jenkins wrote that Notre Dame officials talked in the hours after hearing from Te'o on Dec. 26 and agreed there was no indication of a crime or student conduct code violation. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick spoke with Te'o the next day, and on Dec. 28 the school concluded there were no indications of an NCAA rules violation, which could have put Notre Dame's 12-0 regular season in jeopardy.

The school then made moves to find out who was behind the hoax, thereby protecting Te'o and itself.

"For the first couple of days after receiving the news from Manti, there was considerable confusion and we simply did not know what there was to disclose," Jenkins wrote.

13 Photos

Manti Te'o

On Jan. 2, after several days of internal discussion and a week after Te'o's disclosure, Notre Dame retained Stroz Friedberg, a New York computer forensics firm to investigate the case and whether any other football players had been targeted. The firm did not return phone or email messages left Friday.

Notre Dame officials believed Te'o's girlfriend — whether alive or dead — was at least a real person until the next day, when Stroz Friedberg said it could not find any evidence that Kekua or most of her relatives ever existed. And by Jan. 4, two days after hiring Stroz Friedberg, Notre Dame officials concluded Te'o was the victim of the hoax, there was no threat to the school and the private investigation was suspended.

"We concluded that this matter was personal to Manti," Jenkins wrote, deciding it was up to Te'o to disclose, especially after he signed with Creative Artists Agency on the day after the BCS game.

1/2

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WH, Senators to Begin Push on Immigration Reform

The White House and a bipartisan group of senators next week plan to begin their efforts to push for comprehensive immigration reform.

President Barack Obama will make an announcement on immigration during a Tuesday trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, the White House said on Friday. The Senate group is expected make their plans public around the same time, the Associated Press reported.

See Also: Where Do Labor Unions Stand on Immigration?

For Obama, immigration reform is a campaign promise that has remained unfulfilled from his first White House run in 2008. During his 2012 re-election campaign, the president vowed to renew his effort to overhaul the nation's immigration system. It has long been expected that Obama would roll out his plans shortly after his inauguration.

The president's trip to Las Vegas is designed "to redouble the administration's efforts to work with Congress to fix the broken immigration system this year," the White House said.

Ever since November's election, in which Latino voters turned out in record numbers, Republicans and Democrats have expressed a desire to work on immigration reform. Obama has long supported a bill that would make many of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants without criminal records eligible to apply for an earned pathway to citizenship, which includes paying fines and learning English.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

But the debate over a pathway to citizenship is expected to be contentious. Other flashpoints in an immigration reform push could include a guest-worker program, workplace enforcement efforts, border security, and immigration backlogs.

In a statement, the White House said that "any legislation must include a path to earned citizenship."

Ahead of his immigration push next week, Obama met today with a group of lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), including chairman Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) , Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), and CHC Immigration Task Force Chair Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), the latter's office said. CHC members are expected to play a pivotal role in the debate.

"The president is the quarterback and he will direct the team, call the play, and be pivotal if we succeed. I am very optimistic based on conversations with Republicans in the House and Senate that we will do more than just talk about the immigration issue this year," Gutierrez said in a statement following the CHC meeting with Obama. "The president putting his full weight and attention behind getting a bill signed into law is tremendously helpful. We need the president and the American people all putting pressure on the Congress to act because nothing happens in the Capitol without people pushing from the outside."

A bipartisan group of eight senators, which includes Menendez, has also begun talks on drafting an immigration bill and will play an integral part in the process of passing a bill through Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been participating in talks with others senators, has also unveiled his own outline for an immigration proposal.

The group of senators have reportedly eyed Friday as the date when they'll unveil their separate proposal, according to the Washington Post.

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