Herbal Viagra actually contains the real thing

IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.

Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.

Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"

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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Football: Defeated Barcelona rage over Real 'favouritism'

MADRID: Barcelona defender Gerard Pique has claimed that Real Madrid tend to get the big decisions from referees after his side were denied a last minute penalty in their 2-1 defeat to Real Madrid.

Sergio Ramos' header nine minutes from time proved to be the winner after Karim Benzema and Lionel Messi had exchanged goals in the first-half.

But Pique and his teammates were left aggrieved after Ramos appeared to fell Adriano inside the box with Barca keeper Victor Valdes even receiving a red card for his protests after the final whistle had been blown.

"We said to the referee that it seemed clear to us, but we already know how these things go. Against Real Madrid, if the game is close, just by chance things tend to go in their favour," said Pique.

"We are left with the feeling that a draw would have been a fair result if we had been given the penalty, but we cannot make this excuse because this team has too much quality to depend on refereeing decisions to win games."

The defeat was Barca's third defeat in four games and Pique admits they are struggling to find their best form.

"You can't maintain this level for 12 months. In the last four years we have always had moments in which our level of performance has dropped.

"However, it is clear that we have had three of four bad games and this is serious because Barcelona always have to win."

On the other hand victory came as even more of a welcome surprise for the hosts after manager Jose Mourinho made seven changes to the side that had beaten Barca 3-1 in the Copa del Rey on Tuesday with star-man Cristiano Ronaldo starting only on the bench.

However, even without their talisman they made the perfect start as Benzema tapped home Alvaro Morata's cross before Messi brought Barca level with a trademark left-footed finish 12 minutes later.

Ronaldo's introduction after the break though sparked the game into life and after Valdes had produced fine saves to beat away the Portuguese's free-kick and deny Morata when he was clean through, Ramos left the Barca keeper helpless as he rose highest to power home Luka Modric's corner.

Madrid's victory keeps their very slim hopes of retaining their title alive as it cuts Barca's lead over the champions to 13 points, but as Mourinho's team selection indicated of more immediate importance is Tuesday's make or break Champions League tie with Manchester United with the tie level at 1-1.

And Ramos believes that two victories against Barca is the perfect way to prepare for their trip to Old Trafford.

"It's clear that these victories are great for the confidence of the group because now we face a difficult match in the Champions League," he said.

"After the two Clasicos we are going to Manchester convinced that we can win, although with a lot of respect for the opponent who are a great team."

Elsewhere, Valencia missed the opportunity to move into fourth as Jose Barkero's late equaliser gave Levante a share of the spoils as the Valencia derby ended 2-2.

Vicente Iborra had headed Levante into an early lead before Jonas and Roberto Soldado replied for the hosts, but a slip by Jeremy Mathieu three minutes from time allowed Barkero in to salvage a point for Juan Ignacio Martinez's men.

At the bottom Deportivo la Coruna remain rooted to the foot of the table after they could only manage a 0-0 draw at home to Rayo Vallecano, but Athletic Bilbao eased their relegation fears with a hard-fought 1-0 win away to Osasuna thanks to Markel Susaeta's second-half strike.

- AFP/jc

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Butt-dial to 911 spoils alleged drug deal

Raleigh Reynolds, the accused butt-dialer.

None of us is immune from being our own worst enemy.

We find ways to sabotage ourselves that aren't even assuaged by years of visits to our psychologists.

The extremely openhearted may, therefore, find a certain at-oneness with an alleged drug dealer whose bottom may have caused him to be arrested.

As KGW-TV deals it, Raleigh Reynolds, 25, was allegedly about to participate in a narcotic business transaction.

Unfortunately (at least for him), police say a 911 dispatcher got to listen in on the proceedings, as Reynolods inadvertently called it in.

"It got a chuckle around the department because they don't make it that easy, usually," officer Aaron Christopherson told the police.

The 911 call was received just after midnight last Monday.

And the dialogue seemed somewhat incriminating. For example: "OK, cause I got 40 on me, so the only issue is seeing the product before I purchase."

I hadn't been aware that merely seeing a product was ever enough before purchasing. Though that does help to avoid buying, say, a wooden iPad.

More Technically Incorrect

The recorded butt-dial continued like this: "Yah, I definitely need a 40...and please let it be good. I'm so tired of getting ripped off."

The dispatcher concluded that it was unlikely that the conversation was about a 40-shot frappucino.

So, with the help of GPS technology, the call was traced to a back alley in Molalla, Ore., conveniently just one block from the police station.

The two suspects, a man and a woman, allegedly declared that no, they didn't have a cell phone.

However, the Molalla police have quite some IQ. They spoke loudly and, lo, the dispatcher could hear their voices.

Police allege that the drug involved was meth and Reynolds was charged with multiple felonies.

There is no record of what type of cell phone might have been the police informant.

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We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.")

But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make sense. For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas. The fossil record doesn't reveal whether these large carnivores starved to death because modern humans took most of the meat or whether humans picked them off on purpose. Either way, most of the Ice Age bestiary went extinct.

The hunting hypothesis, that humans used wolves to hunt, doesn't hold up either. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, more successful than every other large carnivore. Wolves eat a lot of meat, as much as one deer per ten wolves every day-a lot for humans to feed or compete against. And anyone who has seen wolves in a feeding frenzy knows that wolves don't like to share.

Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them. Over the last few centuries, almost every culture has hunted wolves to extinction. The first written record of the wolf's persecution was in the sixth century B.C. when Solon of Athens offered a bounty for every wolf killed. The last wolf was killed in England in the 16th century under the order of Henry VII. In Scotland, the forested landscape made wolves more difficult to kill. In response, the Scots burned the forests. North American wolves were not much better off. By 1930, there was not a wolf left in the 48 contiguous states of America.  (See "Wolf Wars.")

If this is a snapshot of our behavior toward wolves over the centuries, it presents one of the most perplexing problems: How was this misunderstood creature tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog?

The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.

Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.

Friendliness caused strange things to happen in the wolves. They started to look different. Domestication gave them splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. In only several generations, these friendly wolves would have become very distinctive from their more aggressive relatives. But the changes did not just affect their looks. Changes also happened to their psychology. These protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives-chimpanzees and bonobos-can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs.

Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have defended their humans from predators.

And finally, though this is not a pleasant thought, when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply. Thousands of years before refrigeration and with no crops to store, hunter-gatherers had no food reserves until the domestication of dogs. In tough times, dogs that were the least efficient hunters might have been sacrificed to save the group or the best hunting dogs. Once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as an emergency food supply, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.

Dr. Brian Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke University. This essay is adapted from their new book, The Genius of Dogs, published by Dutton. To play science-based games to find the genius in your dog, visit www.dognition.com.

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US Seeks to Confirm Report of Terror Leader's Death

American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.

If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat in northern Africa.

Belmokhtar's killing was announced on Chadian national television by armed forces spokesperson Gen. Zacharia Gobongue, who said Chadian troops "operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base."

"The [death] toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar," he said.

However, an unidentified elected official in Mali told The Associated Press he doubted Belmokhtar had actually been killed and said he suspected the Chadian government of pushing the story to ease the loss of dozens of Chadian troops in operations in northern Africa.

SITE Intel Group/AP Photo

Belmokhtar is known as Mr. Marlboro because of the millions he made smuggling cigarettes across the Sahara, but in the last few months the one-eyed terrorist leader has become one of the most sought after terrorists in the world. The attack on the plant near In Amenas in eastern Algeria left dozens of Westerns and at least three Americans dead.

Belmokhtar had formed his own al Qaeda splinter group and announced he would use his wealth to finance more attacks against American and Western interests in the region and beyond.

The U.S. has badly wanted Belmokhtar stopped and actively helped in the search by French and African military units to find him, as well as another top al Qaeda leader who was reported killed yesterday.

After the Chadian announcement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Belmokhtar's death, if confirmed, "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."

Steve Wysocki, a plant worker who survived the attack in In Amenas thanked "military forces from around the world," especially the Chadian military, for bringing "this terrorist to an expedient justice."

"My family and I continue to mourn for our friends and colleagues who didn't make it home and pray for their families," Wysocki told ABC News.

The CIA has been after Belmokhtar since the early 1990s, Royce's statement said.

ABC News' Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.

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Herbal Viagra actually contains the real thing

IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.

Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.

Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"

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.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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Obama to visit Russia in September

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will visit Saint Petersburg for September's G20 summit and will also hold a meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in June.

The White House made the announcement Friday after the leaders spoke by phone to discuss the Syria crisis amid testy relations between Russia and the United States, which have deteriorated since Obama's first term.

Russia had hoped that Obama would pay an official visit to the country last year, his first since Putin returned to the presidency, but Washington's ties with Moscow have been uneasy, and the visit never took place.

Obama's announcement means that he will also not travel to Russia before the G20 summit, in another disappointment to the Kremlin.

Washington and Moscow have been especially at odds over Syria, and Russia's role in vetoing UN Security Council action to censure President Bashar al-Assad for his crackdown on an opposition revolt that has killed 70,000 people.

"The two presidents agreed on the need to advance a political transition to end the violence as soon as possible," said a White House statement, referring to Syria.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will continue to work together on the issue following their meeting in Berlin on Tuesday, the White House said.

A statement issued earlier from the Kremlin said that Putin noted the need to end "military activities" in Syria as soon as possible.

Russia also denounced a new US pledge to provide direct aid, but no arms, to Syrian rebel fighters, saying it will fuel more violence in the nearly two-year war.

Despite the tensions, Obama vowed in his State of the Union address in February to work with the Kremlin to reduce both Russian and American stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have been especially harmed by the Obama administration's criticism of Moscow's deteriorating human rights record under Putin.

There has also been tension over adoptions of Russian orphans by US nationals in recent weeks.

The spat started after the US Congress passed a bill last year targeting Russian officials with sanctions over the prison death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia retaliated with a ban on all US adoptions, saying Russian children in the United States were abused and even murdered by their adoptive parents.

One of Obama's major foreign policy achievements of his first term was a "reset" of relations with Russia engineered with former president Dmitry Medvedev, but the return of Putin has soured the mood.

-AFP/ac

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Tips for increasing the longevity of your Mac

Regardless of whether you purchase it new, refurbished, or used, your Mac is likely a sizable investment that you might wish to keep running for as long as possible, not only because of the cost factor but also because of the time and effort it would take to migrate your data and workflow to a new system (even though Apple has made the latter quite easy if you have proper backups).

There are many ways your
Mac can get damaged, become outdated, or otherwise experience greater wear and tear from use that can shorten its lifespan. In most cases these will only have a little (if any) effect on the system but may help keep the system running longer and without problems or capacity limitations.

The physical

The first part of your Mac is the physical machine, which includes the logic boards and controllers, screen, keyboard, mouse, and other similar components. While peripherals like the keyboard and mouse can be replaced, it may be harder to do so for the components in the machine.

The machine itself
Of the considerations for ensuring a long-lasting Mac, the first begins before you even purchase it where you are offered options to configure your system. Apple offers a number of configure-to-order details including RAM capacity, processor speeds and types, and hard-drive size.

Apple periodically updates its maximum RAM offerings.

(Credit:
CNET)

While for the most part these should be relatively comparable, the faster you go and the more capacity you give the system the longer you will be able to use it before you need to upgrade. For RAM considerations I've usually recommended people get the minimal from Apple and then upgrade at a later date to save money; however, for some of Apple's systems such as the
MacBook Air and Retina
MacBook Pro this is not possible, so purchasing the ones with the most built-in RAM is recommended.

These same recommendations extend to hard drives and processors, especially for systems like the iMac that cannot be easily serviced (if at all in some cases). If you are offered the option to get a Core i5 versus a Core i7 processor for your system, then if you can afford it I would recommend the upgrade (which sometimes comes with the benefit of a faster graphics processor as well). Likewise, consider an SSD over Apple's Fusion Drive, and a Fusion Drive over a conventional hard drive for increased speed.

For hard drives, capacity is not so much an issue as you can always use an external storage device if needed, but the speed of your internal drive that holds your OS and applications is one of the biggest data bottlenecks in the whole system so buying the fastest one will keep your system running in top gear.

Power source care
Of the remaining details, perhaps one of the more common items to be damaged is the system's power supply, which being subject to relatively harsh and noisy wall power circuits can potentially break down over time. In addition, the external power supply for laptops may experience a greater degree of physical abuse that can eventually lead to a failure.

Apple's power adapters may be subject to wear with use, or be replaced with newer options.

(Credit:
Apple)

For power supplies, continued use is not too much of an issue, but surges and sudden power failures may disrupt the system and result in data corruption or broken components (hard drives or the power supply itself), so be sure to help protect your system by either turning it off when not in use, at least using a surge protected power strip, or better yet use a Uninterrupable Power Supply (UPS).

For laptop users, consider purchasing a second power supply for your system, especially since as new technologies become available the older ones may be phased out. For example, Apple recently released new Lightning connectors for iOS devices and a new MagSafe connection for its laptops. While the older MagSafe connections should be available for a while, over time they will be harder to find.

In addition to the power supply for laptops, be sure to take proper care of its batteries. For the health of the batteries, the best practice is to use them regularly (often enough to run through a full charge cycle about once per month) to help prevent dead spots that can reduce their overall capacity. Additionally, do not use them in extreme temperatures, and if you store system for a long period of time, be sure to charge the battery until it is half-full before doing so.

Battery calibration is not a necessary step for its health; however, it can be done regularly as a way to ensure the battery is regularly used.

Avoid abuse
While it might be needless to say, avoiding physical abuse of the systems is another easy way to increase the longevity of Apple's systems. The aluminum Apple uses in its systems is durable and quite protective, but is not indestructible. If you travel with your system then consider using a case or cover that will help protect it, and also consider using a properly padded bag even if you use a case.

In addition to transport security, consider a keyboard slip cover for laptops to help protect the keys from wear. The keys on a MacBook keyboard have a slightly matte finish to them out the factory door, but over time with you pressing them the keys will become shiny as you wear down the top surface. In some cases the wear can be great enough so the symbol disappears making it difficult to type. One option instead of a slip cover is to get a set of transparent stickers to place on the keys that are showing any wear.

Lastly, be kind to the ports on your Mac. When peripherals are attached, the ports can be subject to torquing that in extreme conditions or over time may result in it no longer working, not being able to hold the inserted connection firmly, becoming mangled, or even being subject to shorting out and frying a component of the motherboard. This is easily done by inserting the incorrect plug into a port, so avoid fishing around blindly to insert a connection by feel.

Be aware of your touch
I've often noticed people hammering on keys when typing, or mashing a key or two in frustration, and while the keyboard ought to be able to take such treatment, it can only lead to faster wear. If your system is not working properly then clicking or tapping harder or faster will not fix the situation, and will only increase the chance of damaging the system. In some cases multiple presses during a frustrating hangup can even confuse the system more and make the matter worse.

In addition to using a gentle touch on the keyboard, avoid touching your display, especially if you have one with a matte finish. Apple's glossy glass displays are decently protected from touching, but matte displays can easily be poked and damaged.

Ensuring you have clean hands when using your system is another way to help increase its longevity. Grime and oils on hands can help wear down the surface of keys or simply contribute to dirt that gets into the keyboard and can potentially block a key or two from working.

Clean your system
Dirt and grime on a system will not necessarily hurt it, but over time it can become unsightly and may build up enough to cause a problem or two, so be sure to gently wipe away any grime in keyboards or around the edges of your display, but more importantly be sure the ports and vents are clear of dust or obstructions. It is very easy for dirt to get into these ports, and if you press a connection into them then you only jam the dust in farther, so be sure to check your data ports and clean them out.

For the vents on the system, use canned air or a vacuum cleaner to remove any dust that you see in them, as any reduction in the efficiency of these vents may lead to a system that more easily overheats. For Mac Pro systems, you can easily remove the cover and use canned air to blow around the fans and heat sinks to clear any dust accumulation (do this outside, as billowing clouds of dust can be irritating to live with).

Avoid hard shutoffs
Finally, unless your system is experiencing a crash or severe hangup, then avoid holding the power key to shut it off or unplugging it as this sudden interruption can be damaging to the system's logic boards and components. If you are finding the system is regularly crashing then try addressing this problem instead of resorting to always shutting your system down by yanking the plug or pressing the power key. There are numerous resources for helping find the source of hangs and crashes in OS X, including Apple's retail stores and its online discussion forum.

The logical

Besides taking care of your system's physical condition, consider lengthening its usefulness by maintaining its capabilities, security, and stability. Doing this not only involves the operating system and software that you use, but also considers any components and upgrades that are available for your system.

Software Update is available in the Apple menu.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

Upgrade software
While it can be argued that the features and details in the latest release of OS X may not suit your needs, at least be sure to update your current OS installation to its latest version, as this will ensure the best security and fixes to problems that people have been experiencing. Updating a system can easily be done by going to the Apple menu and choosing Software Update, where the system will check for and then install new versions of operating system software or Apple's supplied programs like iTunes, iPhoto, or iWork.

In addition to Apple's software, be sure to update any third-party software you have installed and keep those at their latest versions, not only to help maintain security but also to ensure compatibility with OS X. Most programs offer built-in updating features similar to Apple's software-update, and can be configured to check for updates on launch or on a regular schedule, so consider setting these up along with doing so for Apple's Software Update to ensure you are running the latest versions of all of your software.

Upgrade hardware
As you use your system and install new releases of OS X and upgrades to your software, you may find that the new software demands more out of your system and can result in a slower system. Therefore, as mentioned above for new systems consider the faster upgrades at purchase, but for older and used systems you can still consider similar upgrades to breathe new life into it and get you up and running faster without needing to purchase a new computer.

The two most common options are to upgrade your system's RAM capacity to give your processor and applications adequate "desk space" in which to perform computations. While 8GB to 16GB of RAM should be adequate these days for most uses, in general the more RAM the better so get as much as you can afford. Just be sure to fully test your RAM once you have installed it to ensure it is working correctly, as bad RAM can be a major source of crashes and data corruption.

Other World Computing's Data Doubler offers a convenient way to put two drives in an older MacBook system.

(Credit:
Topher Kessler/CNET)

Also consider a faster storage medium such as an SSD in place of a conventional hard drive. For laptop systems you can replace older and unused optical drives with a secondary internal drive, giving yourself the options for increased capacity, dual-drive redundancy, an internal backup, options for implementing Apple's "Fusion" drive, and more.

To give a rough estimate, an 8GB RAM upgrade, a 240GB SSD, and an optical drive conversion kit for an old 2008 MacBook Pro will cost about $300 to $400 and will at times more than double the speed of your old system.

Finally, for Mac Pro systems you can upgrade the graphics card for increased graphics performance. While the offerings for this are relatively limited and a touch expensive, if needed the option to do so is out there.

Take care of slowdowns and other problems
Over time and depending on how it's used a Mac can develop odd problems or two that can lead to slowdowns, crashes, hangs, and other odd behaviors that can be a real burden to deal with. Sometimes the issues can be quite difficult to track down, but in general if you are experiencing odd problems there are some approaches you can quickly take to clear them up or at least help identify where the root of the problem may be.

To do this, first try running a general maintenance routine on your system to clear caches and other temporary items that if corrupted may lead to odd problems. Additionally, you can run through a general troubleshooting routine to help identify if the problem is systemwide, because of a third-party program or two, or rooted in your user account, which can greatly help if you need to communicate the problem to others for help.

Lastly, Apple's hardware test suite should be available to most Mac systems and can be used to test the system's RAM and internal sensors to see if a problem is occurring.

Time Machine offers options to back up to more than one drive.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

Back up regularly
A final consideration for increasing your Mac's longevity is to make continual backups. Your Mac's hardware is only half of the story, and your Mac experience lies mainly in your documents, settings, installed applications, and the entirety of your system's software environment. With proper backups, should an irrecoverable problem happen to your system then you can easily restore or migrate your data from the backup to a new system and be up and running as if nothing ever happened (minus the cash for a new system, of course).

Anything missed?
Do you have any tips or suggestions on keeping your Mac running the longest? If so then let us know in the comments.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics.

"The most exciting part of this finding is the ability to test the theory of general relativity in such an extreme regime, where the gravitational field is huge, and the properties of space-time around it are completely different from the standard Newtonian case," said lead author Guido Risaliti, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and INAF-Arcetri Observatory in Italy. (Related: "Speedy Star Found Near Black Hole May Test Einstein Theory.")

Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, supermassive black holes live at the center of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. (See black hole pictures.)

They can pack the gravitational punch of many million or even billions of suns—distorting space-time in the region around them, not even letting light to escape their clutches.

Galactic Monster

The predatory monster that lurks at the core of the relatively nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is estimated to weigh in at about two million times the mass of the sun, and stretches some 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) across-more than eight times the distance between Earth and the moon, Risaliti said. (Also see "Black Hole Blast Biggest Ever Recorded.")

Risaliti and colleagues' unprecedented discovery was made possible thanks to the combined observations from NASA's high-energy x-ray detectors on its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) probe and the European Space Agency's low-energy, x-ray-detecting XMM-Newton space observatory.

Astronomers detected x-ray particle remnants of stars circling in a pancake-shaped accretion disk surrounding the black hole, and used this data to help determine its rate of spin.

By getting a fix on this spin speed, astronomers now hope to better understand what happens inside giant black holes as they gravitationally warp space-time around themselves.

Even more intriguing to the research team is that this discovery will shed clues to black hole's past, and the evolution of its surrounding galaxy.

Tracking the Universe's Evolution

Supermassive black holes have a large impact in the evolution of their host galaxy, where a self-regulating process occurs between the two structures.

"When more stars are formed, they throw gas into the black hole, increasing its mass, but the radiation produced by this accretion warms up the gas in the galaxy, preventing more star formation," said Risaliti.

"So the two events—black hole accretion and formation of new stars—interact with each other."

Knowing how fast black holes spin may also help shed light how the entire universe evolved. (Learn more about the origin of the universe.)

"With a knowledge of the average spin of galaxies at different ages of the universe," Risaliti said, "we could track their evolution much more precisely than we can do today."

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Sequester Begins But Govt. Shutdown Looks Unlikely

Mar 1, 2013 4:13pm

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

It may not be readily obvious from the blizzard of news out there today on the “sequester,” but a government shutdown became significantly less likely today, even as the automatic budget cuts barreled ahead toward reality.

What happened? Both sides – Republicans and Democrats – basically seem to have agreed that as they will continue to fight out the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts starting to take effect today, they will not allow that disagreement to jeopardize full funding for the federal government. That funding is now scheduled to expire March 27.

RELATED: President Obama, Congressional Leaders Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

After the White House meeting this morning, House Speaker John Boehner said he would have the House vote next week to fund the full government – what’s known as a “continuing resolution.”

Boehner: “I did lay out that the House is going to move a continuing resolution next week to fund the government past March 27th, and I’m hopeful that we won’t have to deal with the threat of a government shutdown while we’re dealing with the sequester at the same time. The House will act next week, and I hope the Senate will follow suit.”

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Boehner’s office provided this read-out of the meeting: “The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the president’s sequester.”

The president was asked at his mini-news conference whether he would definitely sign such a bill, even if it keeps government going at the new, lower spending levels as this fight is resolved (or not).

RELATED: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

Obama’s response: “With respect to the budget and keeping the government open – I’ll try for our viewing audience to make sure that we’re not talking in Washington gobbledygook. What’s called the continuing resolution, which is essentially just an extension of last year’s budget into this year’s budget to make sure that basic government functions continue, I think it’s the right thing to do to make sure that we don’t have a government shutdown. And that’s preventable.”

So even as we moved toward the brink of sequester, the nation’s leaders took a step back from another, much larger cliff.

SHOWS: World News

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Mystery ring of radiation briefly encircled Earth

What were you doing last September? The charged particles that dance around Earth were busy. Unbeknown to most earthlings, a previously unseen ring of radiation encircled our planet for nearly the whole month – before being destroyed by a powerful interplanetary shock wave.

We already knew that two, persistent belts of charged particles, called the Van Allen radiation belts, encircle Earth. The discovery of a third, middle ring by NASA's twin Van Allen probes, launched in August 2012, suggests that these belts, which have puzzled scientists for over 50 years, are even stranger than we thought. Working out what caused the third ring to develop could help protect spacecraft from damaging doses of radiation.

Charged particles get trapped by Earth's magnetic field into two distinct regions, forming the belts. The inner belt, which extends from an altitude of 1600 to 12,900 kilometres, is fairly stable. But the outer belt, spanning altitudes ranging from 19,000 to 40,000 kilometres, can vary wildly. Over the course of minutes or hours, its electrons can be accelerated to close to the speed of light, and it can grow to 100 times its usual size.

Mystery acceleration

No one is sure what causes these "acceleration events", although it seems to have something to do with solar activity interacting with the Earths' magnetic field.

"That's one of the key things the probes are in place to understand," says Dan Baker of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "How does this cosmic accelerator, operating just a few thousand miles above our head, accelerate electrons to such extraordinarily high energies?"

When the Van Allen probes started taking data on 1 September 2012, one of these mysterious events was already under way. "We came in the middle of the movie there," Baker says. But otherwise, he says, "What we expected was what we saw when we first turned on: two distinct belts, separated."

That changed a day later when, to the team's surprise, an extra ring developed between the inner and outer ones. "We watched it develop right before our eyes," Baker says. The new, middle ring was relatively narrow, and its electrons had energies between 4 and 7.5 megaelectronvolts - about the same as in the outer Van Allen belt during an acceleration event.

Although the outer ring displayed its characteristic inconstancy, the new middle ring barely budged for nearly four weeks. Then a shock wave, probably linked to a burst of solar activity, wiped it out in less than an hour on 1 October.

Spacecraft malfunctions

It's not clear where the middle ring came from, Baker says, although it was probably related to the acceleration event. The electrons could have been stripped from the outer Van Allen belt, funnelled back towards the Earth and got trapped in the middle on the way, or they could have been energised from closer to Earth and shot up to higher altitudes.

Figuring out what happened could be important to protecting spacecraft from radiation damage, says Yuri Shprits of the University of California in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the observations but is crafting a theoretical explanation that he hopes to publish soon. "It truly presents us with a very important question, and very important puzzles," he says.

There were no specific spacecraft malfunctions during September that can be directly linked to the new belt, says Shprits. However satellite operators will want to know if such belts are common and if they pose more of a risk.

With no other examples of a transient belt caught so far, it's too soon to answer all those questions, Baker says. "We only have one in captivity," he says. "We're still trying to figure out exactly how it works."

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1233518

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Facebook buys advertising firm from Microsoft

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook agreed Thursday to buy Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft as part of an effort to boost ad revenues at the massive social network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Atlas is a leader in campaign management and measurement for marketers and agencies. We believe this acquisition will benefit both marketers and users," Facebook's Brian Boland said in a blog post.

Atlas was part of the aQuantive group acquired by Microsoft, which ended up in a writedown and loss for Microsoft last year.

Microsoft's Dave O'Hara said the deal "will strengthen our existing partnership" with Facebook "for the benefit of both companies and their respective long-term visions."

Facebook has become the world's biggest social network with more than one billion users, but its stock has been hit by concerns about its ability to boost revenues and profitability.

The California group has been working on a number of advertising initiatives for both desktop and mobile Facebook applications.

Facebook shares rose 1.4 percent to end Thursday at $27.25.

- AFP/ac

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Bigger, thicker, cheaper, plastic iPhone coming next year (rumor)

Apple's iPhone 5 makes use of aluminum and ceramics.

(Credit:
Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Holdouts expecting a larger version of the iPhone this year will have to keep on waiting, a new report says.

Citing sources, Japanese Apple news site Macotakara says such a device is instead slated for next year, and will use plastic instead of aluminum for its body.

Macotakara says the device will sport a polycarbonate plastic enclosure much like the one found on the MacBook, and iBook before it -- a product line that was discontinued in mid-2011. Other rumored details include a 4.5-inch screen, which would be half an inch larger than the one found on the
iPhone 5 and
iPod Touch; Apple's usual home button; and a $330 price tag that would be a little less than half of the average selling price of the iPhone 5 (without carrier subsidy).

As MacRumors notes, Macotakara's had a mixed rumor scorecard, but had accurate information about Apple's latest batch of iPods, some two months before they were officially unveiled.

Wall Street analysts have, for months, opined about possibilities of a larger-screened device, and the potential financial windfall it could provide Apple. In a note earlier this month, Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes said the firm believes the company is cooking up a 5-inch model for later this year or the first quarter of next year, and that it could boost the average amount Apple sells the iPhone for by about 5 percent during the 2014 calendar year.

The rumor is separate from those pointing to another "S" iteration from Apple later this year. The company has released both the
iPhone 3GS and 4S between major device generations, something that is expected to happen once again. Purported shots of the device's internal components surfaced in January alongside reports Apple was planning to double down with a second, cheaper model to gain ground in emerging markets.

(via Apple Insider)

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Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack

A scar on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound, scientists say.

The finding, detailed in the current issue of the journal Cretaceous Research, also reveals that the healing properties of dinosaur skin were likely very similar to that of modern reptiles.

The lucky dinosaur was an adult Edmontosaurus annectens, a species of duckbill dinosaur that lived in what is today the Hell Creek region of South Dakota about 65 to 67 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5 by 5 inches (12 by 14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature's bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye, includes an oval-shaped section that is incongruous with the surrounding skin. (Related: "'Dinosaur Mummy' Found; Have Intact Skin, Tissue.")

Bruce Rothschild, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas and Northeast Ohio Medical University, said the first time he laid eyes on it, it was "quite clear" to him that he was looking at an old wound.

"That was unequivocal," said Rothschild, who is a co-author of the new study.

A Terrible Attacker

The skull of the scarred Edmontosaurus also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the bone, Rothschild and fellow co-author Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida, speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex.

It's likely, though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, the scientists say. The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth," Rothschild said.

Rothschild and DePalma also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.

It isn't surprising that the wounds would be similar, said paleontologist David Burnham of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, since dinosaurs and lizards are distant cousins.

"That's kind of what we would expect," said Burnham, who was not involved in the study. "It's what makes evolution work—that we can depend on this."

Dog-Eat-Dog

Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada who also was not involved in the research, called the Edmontosaurus fossil "a really nicely preserved animal with a very obvious scar."

He's not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack. The size of the scar is relatively small, Bell said, and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.

"But certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones," he added.

Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound. But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead.

It's very likely that this particular Edmontosaurus wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents, Bell added.

"I would imagine just about every dinosaur walking around had similar scars," he said. (Read about "Extreme Dinosaurs" in National Geographic magazine.)

"Tigers and lions have scarred noses, and great white sharks have got dings on their noses and nips taken out of their fins. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and [Edmontosaurus was] unfortunately in the line of fire from some pretty big and nasty predators ... This one was just lucky to get away."

Mysterious Escape

Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear. "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen," Burnham said.

Duckbill dinosaurs, also known as Hadrosaurs, were not without defenses. Edmontosaurus, for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.

Furthermore, they were fast. "Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight," Bell said.

Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors. Or perhaps the T. rex that attacked it was young. "There's something surrounding this case that we don't know yet," Burnham said.

Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting, he added. "We construct past lives. We can go back into a day in the life of this animal and talk about an attack and [about] it getting away. That's pretty cool."

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Obama Admin to Court: End Calif. Gay Marriage Ban

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, plans to file a brief today with the Supreme Court in favor of challengers of Prop. 8, according to an administration source.

It would mark the first time that the Obama administration has come out in court against the California ballot initiative that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

As far back as 2008, the president said that he thought Prop 8 was "divisive and discriminatory," but his Justice Department has never opined on its constitutionality. Because the DOJ is not a party to the case, it is not required to file a "friend of the court" brief, but the deadlines for briefs supporting the challengers to Prop 8 is tonight at midnight.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Theodore Olson, one of the lead lawyers challenging Prop 8, told reporters last week that he hoped the DOJ lawyers would take the opportunity to set down a legal position.

In Depth: Obama's Prop 8 Decision

"However," Olson added, "whether they do or not, the president of the United States made it very clear in his inaugural address that we cannot rest in America until all civilians have equal rights under the law so, in a sense, the president has made that statement already."

Today, 39 states have laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples. This number includes voter-approved constitutional amendments in 30 states barring same sex marriage. Nine states allow gay marriage.

Related: Eric Holder Says Gay Marriage is the Next Civil Rights Issue

Related: Republican Moderates Join Legal Fight for Gay Marriage

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Quantum skyfall puts Einstein's gravity to the test

DIVIDING a falling cloud of frozen atoms sounds like an exotic weather experiment. In fact, it's the latest way to probe whether tiny objects obey Einstein's theory of general relativity, our leading explanation for gravity.

General relativity is based on the equivalence principle, which says that in free fall, all objects fall at the same rate, whatever their mass, provided the only force at work is gravity. That has been proven for large objects: legend has it that Galileo did it first by dropping various balls from the Tower of Pisa. Whether equivalence holds at quantum scales, where gravity's effects are not well understood, isn't clear. Figuring it out could help create a quantum theory of gravity, one of the biggest goals of modern physics.

Creating a quantum equivalent of Galileo's test isn't easy. In 2010 a team led by Ernst Rasel of the University of Hannover in Germany monitored a quantum object in free fall, by tossing a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) – a cloud of chilled atoms that behaves as a single quantum object and so is both particle and wave – down a 110-metre tall tower. Now they have split and recombined the wave – all before the BEC, made of rubidium atoms, reached the bottom. This produces an interference pattern that records the path of the falling atoms and can be used to calculate their acceleration (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/km6). The next step is to do the same experiment on a different kind of atom, with a different mass, to see if the equivalence principle holds.

The BEC can only be split for 100 milliseconds in the tower before hitting the bottom, so to allow tiny differences between the atom types to emerge, the work must be repeated in space, where the waves can be split for longer. By showing that a matter-wave can be split and recombined while falling, Rasel's result is a "major step" towards the space version, says Charles Wang of the University of Aberdeen, UK.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Quantum skyfall tests Einstein's gravity"

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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AIM not bidding for PAP town councils' tender

SINGAPORE: Action Information Management (AIM), which runs the People's Action Party (PAP) town councils' computer systems, will no longer operate the systems when its contract expires on April 30. It said on Wednesday that it will not participate in the latest tender exercise.

The arrangement between AIM, a company fully owned by the PAP, and the PAP town councils had caused controversy even though both parties had explained that the process by which the open tender was awarded to AIM was above board.

AIM Chairman S Chandra Das said: "Given that AIM had helped prepare the tender documents, it decided not to participate in the tender."

When contacted, Dr Teo Ho Pin, who is the Coordinating Chairman of the PAP town councils, confirmed the news: "AIM should not bid for this tender as they are involved in the tender specification preparation."

Dr Teo declined to reveal how many parties had collected the tender documents "as tendering is in progress".

In media reports last week, Mr Das declined to say whether AIM had - or would - bid for the tender, which was put up by the PAP town councils on February 4 and will close on Monday. Dr Teo had also said the latest tender was for developing a new town council management system. The previous tender - which was won by AIM in 2010 - was to sell and lease back computer software to the PAP town councils.

The saga began on December 14 after Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) Chairman Sylvia Lim explained the town council's less-than-stellar performance in a management report.

Ms Lim, part of the Workers' Party team which took over management of the town council after the General Election in 2011, blamed the AHTC's poor performance on the need to develop new IT systems within two months of the PAP-owned AIM terminating its contract last August.

Her explanation was followed by a series of statements by the AHTC and AIM. Among other things, questions were raised about the termination of the contract and the fact that AIM won a tender to manage the computer systems used by the town councils.

Last month, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that the Ministry of National Development will review the transaction. Among other things, the review will re-examine the fundamental nature of town councils, after much public debate about whether the town councils are public institutions or political organisations.

- TODAY

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See a saber duel through Darth Vader's eyes

I've got a bad feeling about this.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Christopher MacManus/CNET)

In the "Star Wars" universe, Jedi and Sith usually settle a score with a good old-fashioned lightsaber duel. Even though all six movies featured lengthy confrontations filled with sizzling sabers, George Lucas never showed an angle of how that type of fight would appear through the eyes of a dueler.

Independent filmmakers The Stunt People created a first-person perspective video of Darth Vader fighting against a bearded Jedi who looks a lot like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Kyle Katarn. The clip runs short, but it may just inspire more excitement than the saber swinging that goes on in the real movies.

Choreography group Saber Combat developed the action, and the actors used modified Hasbro Force FX sabers to give the skirmish a real feel.

"Star Wars" enthusiasts might want to keep their expectations simple as some rather peculiar moves might be irksome. For example, when the Jedi has his back to Vader, the Sith Lord merely uses the Force to shove him away instead of plunging the saber in his back.

In addition, Vader force-chokes the Jedi at a very close range, which would likely not happen as the Sith doesn't mind personally choking people as demonstrated in "A New Hope." Regardless of these niggles, I wouldn't mind the newly appointed "Star Wars VII" director J.J. Abrams using a similar first-person style in the next movie.

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Why African Rhinos Are Facing a Crisis

The body count for African rhinos killed for their horns is approaching crisis proportions, according to the latest figures released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

To National Geographic reporter Peter Gwin, the dire numbers—a rhinoceros slain every 11 minutes since the beginning of 2013—don't come as a surprise. "The killing will continue as long as criminal gangs know they can expect high profits for selling horns to Asian buyers," said Gwin, who wrote about the violent and illegal trade in rhino horn in the March 2012 issue of the magazine.

The recent surge in poaching has been fueled by a thriving market in Vietnam and China for rhino horn, used as a traditional medicine believed to cure everything from hangovers to cancer. Since 2011, at least 1,700 rhinos, or 7 percent of the total population, have been killed and their horns hacked off, according to the IUCN. More than two-thirds of the casualties occurred in South Africa, home to 73 percent of the world's wild rhinos. In Africa there are currently 5,055 black rhinos, listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, and 20,405 white rhinos. (From our blog: "South African Rhino Poaching Hits New High.")

Trying to snuff out poaching by itself won't work, said Gwin. The South African government is fighting a losing battle on the ground to gangs using helicopters, dart guns, high-powered weapons—and lots of money. (National Geographic pictures: The bloody poaching battle over rhino horn [contains graphic images].)

"Every year they get tougher on poaching, but rhino killings continue to rise astronomically," said Gwin. "Somehow they have to address the demand side in a meaningful way. This means either shutting down the Asian markets for rhino horn, or controversially, finding a way to sustainably harvest rhino horns, control their legal sale, and meet what appears to be a huge demand. Either will be a formidable endeavor."

Hope and Hurdles

The signing in December of a memorandum of understanding between South Africa and Vietnam to deal with rhino poaching and other conservation issues raises hope for some concrete action. Observers say the next step is for the two governments to follow through with tangible crime-stopping efforts such as intelligence sharing and other collaboration. The highest hurdle to stopping criminal trade, though, is cultural, Gwin believes. "In Vietnam and China, a lot of people simply believe that as a traditional cure, rhino horn works." (Related: "Blood Ivory.")

The recent climb in rhino deaths threatens what had been a conservation success story. Since 1995, due to better law enforcement, monitoring, and other actions, the overall rhino numbers have steadily risen. The poaching epidemic, the IUCN warns, could dramatically slow and possibly reverse population gains.

The population growth is also being stymied by South Africa's private game farmers, who breed rhinos for sport hunting and tourism and for many years have helped rebuild rhino numbers. Many of them are getting out of the business due to the high costs of security and other risks associated with the poaching invasions.

Those who still have rhinos on their farms will often pay a veterinarian to cut the horns off—under government supervision—to dissuade poachers, but the process costs more than $2,000 and has to be repeated when the horns grow back every two years. Even then the farmers are stuck with horns that are illegal to sell—and which criminals seek to obtain.

Room for Debate

Rhino killings and the trade in their horns will be a major topic at a high-profile conference, the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which opens in Bangkok March 3. What won't surprise Gwin is if the issue of sustainably harvesting rhino horns from live animals comes up for discussion.

"It's an idea that seems to be gaining traction among some South African politicians and law enforcement circles," he said, noting that the international conservation community strongly opposes any talk of legalizing the trade of rhino horn, sustainably harvested or not. The bottom line for all parties in the discussion is clear, said Gwin: "The slaughter has to stop if rhinos are to survive."

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Holder Says Sequester Makes America Less Safe

The looming budget sequestration will make Americans less safe, Eric Holder says—and anyone who says otherwise isn't telling the truth.

"This is something that is going to have an impact on the safety of this country," the U.S. attorney general told ABC's Pierre Thomas on Wednesday in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview.

"And anybody that says otherwise is either lying or saying something that runs contrary to the facts," Holder said.

In his interview with ABC News, Holder reiterated warnings that if automatic spending cuts are triggered on Friday, the Justice Department will be handicapped in some of its most vital missions to prevent terrorist attacks and crime.

"The Justice Department is going to lose nine percent of its budget between now and September 30th. We're going to lose $1.6 billion. There are not going to be as many FBI agents, ATF agents, DEA agents, prosecutors who are going to be able to do their jobs," Holder said. "They're going to be furloughed. They're going to spend time out of their offices, not doing their jobs."

Portions of the interview will air Wednesday, February 27 on "ABC World News"

Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

Eric Holder Says Homegrown Terror Threat Equals International: Exclusive Watch Video

Eric Holder Remembers Newtown, His Worst Day on the Job: Exclusive Watch Video

President Obama's Cabinet members have been warning for weeks that budget sequestration, which will begin Friday unless Obama and Republicans reach a deficit-reduction deal to avoid it, will leave their agencies shorthanded and could bring about disastrous consequences. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood have both appeared at the White House press briefing room to warn that furloughs for border-patrol agents, TSA agents and air-traffic controllers will mean weakened border and port security, longer waits in airport security lines, and logjammed air travel.

Holder, for his part, warned in a Feb. 1 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee that cuts to the FBI, the ATF, the U.S. Marshals Service, and U.S. Attorneys would limit the department's capacity to investigate crimes. Cuts at the Bureau of Prisons, Holder wrote, would mean lockdowns and potential violence, with fewer staff members on hand. In a separate letter, FBI Director Robert Mueller warned that counterterrorism operations would be affected, with the possible elimination of some joint terrorism task forces with state and local police. Limited surveillance and slower response times would mean unwatched targets and the possibility that individuals on terrorism watch lists could gain entry to the U.S.

"FBI's ability to proactively penetrate and disrupt terrorist plans and groups prior to an attack would be impacted," Mueller wrote.

To Holder, the problem is simple.

"If you don't have prosecutors and agents doing what we expect them to do, and we won't if this thing actually takes place, we are going to be a nation that is going to be less safe. And that is simple fact," Holder said.

Some Republicans have claimed the Obama administration is exaggerating the sequester's purported consequences as a ploy to campaign for tax hikes. On "Fox News Sunday" this week, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., posited that federal agencies enjoy enough flexibility to avoid the worst consequences of the cuts.

On Wednesday, Holder acknowledged that the Justice Department will do what it can to avoid compromised security, while maintaining that furloughs can't be avoided.

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Newly spotted comet to buzz Mars in 2014

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

A Martian sunset, as seen by NASA's Spirit rover in 2005.
(Image: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA)

There's a new comet in town, and it is making a beeline for Mars. If projections of its orbit are correct, the icy visitor will buzz the Red Planet in October 2014.

Dubbed C/2013 A1, the comet was discovered on 3 January by prolific comet hunter Robert McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Colleagues at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona found images of the comet in their catalogue that date back to 8 December 2012, giving additional information about its movements.

These observations allowed astronomers to trace the comet's likely path around the sun. The calculated trajectory has C/2013 A1 crossing Mars' orbit on 19 October 2014, according to Australian blogger Ian Musgrave.

That doesn't necessarily mean a collision will occur. The best estimates right now have the comet passing a safe distance of 900,000 kilometres from the Martian surface. Asteroid 2012 DA14 got much closer to Earth last week, skimming by at a distance of 34,400 kilometres. But with so little data in hand, the calculations are not precise. It's possible the comet will miss Mars by as much as 36 million kilometres - or it could smack right into the planet. "An impact can't be ruled out at this stage," Musgrave wrote.

From Earth, we should be able to see the comet and Mars sitting side by side through small telescopes. And from Mars, the comet could be as spectacular as the expected "supercomet" ISON, which will come into view this year and could outshine the full moon.

Assuming the comet's orbit brings it close enough - but not too close - to Mars, the object should be visible either by rovers on the surface or the armada of Mars-orbiting satellites, which have a history of snapping spectacular shots of the Red Planet and its neighborhood.

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Dollar edges higher as Bernanke confirms stimulus

NEW YORK: The dollar edged higher Tuesday against the euro after Ben Bernanke confirmed the US Fed's stimulus program would continue, while the yen traded flat ahead of the nomination of a new Bank of Japan chief.

At 2200 GMT the euro was at $1.3061, compared to $1.3065 late Monday. The euro remained under pressure after Italy's inconclusive election, which some fear could lead to more political trouble and policy stalemate in the country.

"Political uncertainty has increased in Italy following the election results weighing upon the euro and risk assets," said Lee Hardman, currency analyst at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in London.

In Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke quelled speculation of an early end to quantitative easing when he told a Senate panel that the Fed's stimulus program was having an impact and was still needed.

He said inflation remained subdued and the Fed was keeping its eye on any potentially risky behavior in the market due to low-interest rates.

The Fed policy board "remains confident that it has the tools necessary to tighten monetary policy when the time comes to do so," he added.

The yen was barely changed against the dollar at 91.93, and the euro was at 120.08 yen compared to 120.12 yen late Monday.

Markets were waiting for confirmation of who would be named to head the bank of Japan, after newspapers reported Monday that Asian Development Bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda, an advocate of a lower yen, would be named.

The British pound fell further, to $1.5126 from $1.5166 late Monday. The dollar was little changed on the Swiss franc, at 0.9315 francs.

-AFP/ac

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Adobe issues emergency patch for zero-day Flash vulnerabilities

Adobe Systems released a security update today that addresses a trio of vulnerabilities in Flash, two of which it said were already being exploited by hackers.

Today's surprise update -- the company's third for the browser plugin this month -- patches holes "that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," Adobe said in a security bulletin.

"Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0643 and CVE-2013-0648 are being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking a link which directs to a website serving malicious Flash content," the advisory stated, identifying the vulnerabilities by their Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures. The exploit for CVE-2013-0643 and CVE-2013-0648 is designed to target the
Firefox browser."

Adobe assigned a Priority 1 rating to the vulnerabilities being exploited on Windows and
Mac OS X and advised users of both operating systems to install the update within 72 hours. That rating -- Adobe's highest threat level -- identifies "vulnerabilities being targeted, or which have a higher risk of being targeted, by exploit(s) in the wild." The bulletin also assigned the Flash vulnerability facing Linux users a Priority 3 rating, which refers to "a product that has historically not been a target for attackers."

Adobe recommends users update to the latest versions:

• Users of Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.168 and earlier versions for Windows and Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.167 and earlier versions for Macintosh should update to Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.171.


• Users of Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.270 and earlier versions for Linux should update to Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.273.
  


• Flash Player installed with Google Chrome will automatically be updated to the latest Google Chrome version, which will include Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.171 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.


• Flash Player installed with Internet Explorer 10 for
  Windows 8 will automatically be updated to the latest version of Internet Explorer 10, which will include Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.171 for Windows.

The update is Adobe's third this month and its second emergency update in less than three weeks. A fix for two zero-day threats issued on February 8 addressed vulnerabilities that affected all versions of Flash on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

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A History of Balloon Crashes

A hot-air balloon exploded in Egypt yesterday as it carried 19 people over ancient ruins near Luxor. The cause is believed to be a torn gas hose. In Egypt as in many other countries, balloon rides are a popular way to sightsee. (Read about unmanned flight in National Geographic magazine.)

The sport of hot-air ballooning dates to 1783, when a French balloon took to the skies with a sheep, a rooster, and a duck. Apparently, they landed safely. But throughout the history of the sport, there have been tragedies like the one in Egypt. (See pictures of personal-flight technology.)

1785: Pioneering balloonist Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and pilot Pierre Romain died when their balloon caught fire, possibly from a stray spark, and crashed during an attempt to cross the English Channel. They were the first to die in a balloon crash.

1923: Five balloonists participating in the Gordon Bennett Cup, a multi-day race that dates to 1906, were killed when lightning struck their balloons.

1924: Meteorologist C. LeRoy Meisinger and U.S. Army balloonist James T. Neely died after a lightning strike. They had set off from Scott Field in Illinois during a storm to study air pressure. Popular Mechanics dubbed them "martyrs of science."

1995: Tragedy strikes the Gordon Bennett Cup again. Belarusian forces shot down one of three balloons that drifted into their airspace from Poland. The two Americans on board died. The other balloonists were detained and fined for entering Belarus without a visa. (Read about modern explorers who take to the skies.)

1989: Two hot air balloons collided during a sightseeing trip near Alice Springs, Australia. One balloon crashed to the ground killing all 13 people on board. The pilot of the other balloon was sentenced to a two-year prison term for "committing a dangerous act." Until today, this was considered the most deadly balloon accident.

2012: A balloon hit a power line and caught fire in New Zealand, killing all 11 on board. Investigators later determined that the pilot was not licensed to fly and had not taken  proper safety measures during the crash, like triggering the balloon's parachute and deflation system.

2012: A sightseeing balloon carrying 32 people crashed and caught fire during a thunderstorm in the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia. Six died; many other passengers were injured.

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Senate Votes to Confirm Hagel as Defense Secretary

After a tough two-month battle characterized by tough interrogation and a partisan divide, the Senate voted 58-41 to confirm Chuck Hagel -- President Obama's nominee -- as secretary of defense this afternoon.

Only four Republicans broke party lines to vote in Hagel's favor. They included Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Mike Johanns of Nebraska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, though Paul had voted against moving forward with the vote earlier today.

Before that cloture vote to close the debate and bring Hagel's nomination to a vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned Republicans against continuing their partisan fight against the nominee.

"Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason: partisanship," Reid said. "Politically motivated delays send a terrible signal to allies around the world, and they send a terrible signal to tens of thousands of Americans serving in Afghanistan, other parts of world and those valiant people who are serving here in the United States. For the sake of national security, it's time to set aside this partisanship."

The measure to move forward passed by a vote of 71-27. It needed at least 60 votes to pass.

Some Republican senators took the time before the vote to take a last stab at Hagel.

John Cornyn, R-Texas, who was one of 15 senators who sent a letter to Obama last week calling for him to withdraw his nomination of Hagel, said Hagel had proved that he's ill-prepared to assume the defense secretary post.

Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense: Confirmation Process Watch Video

Obama Taps Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary Watch Video

"There's simply no way to sugar coat it," Cornyn said. "Sen. Hagel's performance before the Senate Armed Services Committee was remarkably inept, and we should not be installing a defense secretary who is obviously not qualified for the job and who holds dangerously misguided views on some of the most important issues facing national security policy for our country. Sen. Hagel is clearly the wrong man for the job."

The Senate returned today after a week off from debating Hagel's pros and cons.

Today's was not the first attempt to bring Hagel's nomination to the floor.

Republicans blocked a cloture vote to confirm Hagel on Valentine's Day, pushing the decision back until after their President's Day recess.

Democrats framed that rejection as a filibuster, while Republicans said they needed another week to discuss the candidate's record.

"This is a very controversial nominee. There is a desire to not end debate now," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that Thursday. "We feel like come back next week, after the break, unless there is some bombshell I'd be ready to move on to vote."

Ten days later, GOP Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona predicted the Senate would go through with a vote today.

A group of 15 Republicans sent a letter to Obama last week asking him to withdraw Hagel's nomination. Coburn, one of the senators who signed that letter, said the fight among lawmakers over Hagel's qualifications would weaken him should he become secretary.

"I like Chuck Hagel as an individual, but the fact is, in modern times, we haven't had one defense secretary that's had more than three votes against him," Coburn said on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend. "And you're going to have 40 votes against him, or 35 votes. And that sends a signal to our allies as well as our foes that he does not have broad support in the U.S. Congress, which limits his ability to carry out his job."

McCain did not sign that letter.

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