Dollar hits new 20-month high, tops 85 yen

TOKYO: The dollar rose past 85.00 yen in early Asian trade on Wednesday on expectations that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) would take more monetary easing steps under pressure from the incoming government.

The greenback was at 85.10 yen shortly after 0000 GMT, the first time above 85.00 yen since April 2011 and up from 84.78 yen in Tokyo afternoon trade on Tuesday.

The Japanese currency has been declining as incoming prime minister Shinzo Abe, whose Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide national election last week, steps up pressure on the central bank to take bold easing steps.

The dollar is likely to trade in a 84.50-85.30 range, with activity subdued amid fewer market participants due to the year-end holiday season, said Osao Iizuka, head of FX trading at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

"The bottom line is that the dollar will likely rise further next year amid expectations that the Fed will exit loose monetary policy earlier than the BoJ", he told Dow Jones Newswires.

Abe is to be named prime minister later Wednesday, after he swept to power on a hawkish platform of getting tough on diplomacy while fixing the economy with active fiscal spending and monetary easing.

On Sunday he threatened to change a law guaranteeing the central bank's independence if it did not agree to set a two-per cent inflation target, in a bid to drag the country out of the deflation that has haunted its economy for years.

Abe, who previously served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007, is expected to name Taro Aso, another former prime minister in Japan's revolving-door political system, as finance minister and his own deputy, reports said.

As prime minister in 2008-2009, Aso launched a series of economic stimulus packages worth hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up Japan's long-struggling economy.

- AFP/ck

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Netflix outage mars Christmas Eve

Netflix's video streaming service suffered a Christmas Eve outage on "many but not all devices" across the Americas, according to the company.

The outage continued into Christmas morning for some customers. The company tweeted on its Netflix US account at 8:45 a.m. PT today that the service was "back to normal streaming levels."

Netflix first started responding to tweets about disrupted service before 1 p.m. PT yesterday. About three hours later, Netflix offered an apology on its main Twitter account.

"We're sorry for the Christmas Eve outage. Terrible timing! Engineers are working on it now," Netflix said in a tweet in the late afternoon yesterday.

Netflix pinned the issue on Amazon Web Services servers and said it was working with Amazon engineers on a fix.

By evening, Netflix noted that the problem was not yet resolved and promised to tweet as soon as it was back up.

Netflix spokesman Joris Evers e-mailed a statement to CNET today about the outage, noting that "streaming was available again for the majority of our members late on Christmas Eve Pacific Time."

Netflix tagged the outage as starting around 12:30 p.m. PT. The number of devices affected by the outage was "initially limited but grew in scope" over the afternoon, Evers said.

"We...apologize for any inconvenience caused last night," today's statement said. "We are investigating the cause and will do what we can to prevent reccurrence."

Not surprisingly, many angry customers poured out their wrath via social networking. However, Joel Braverman, developer program coordinator at Roku, looked at the bright side.

"Thanks to @netflix outage we can likely expect a moderate population explosion in nine months," he tweeted today.

This story was updated at 10:50 a.m. PT.

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Photos: Humboldt Squid Have a Bad Day at the Beach

Photograph by Chris Elmenhurst, Surf the Spot Photography

“Strandings have been taking place with increased frequency along the west coast over the past ten years,” noted NOAA’s Field, “as this population of squid seems to be expanding its range—likely a consequence of climate change—and can be very abundant at times.” (Learn about other jumbo squid strandings.)

Humboldt squid are typically found in warmer waters farther south in theGulf of California (map) and off the coast ofPeru. “[But] we find them up north here during warmer water time periods,” said ocean sciences researcherKenneth Bruland with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Coastal upwelling—when winds blowing south drive ocean circulation to bring cold, nutrient-rich waters up from the deep—ceases during the fall and winter and warmer water is found closer to shore. Bruland noted that climate change, and the resulting areas of low oxygen, “could be a major factor” in drawing jumbo squid north.

Published December 24, 2012

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Gunman Killed Firemen With Bushmaster, Left Note

A convicted killer, who shot dead two firefighters with a Bushmaster assault rifle after leading them into an ambush when they responded to a house fire he set in Western New York, left behind a typewritten note saying he wanted to "do what I like doing best, killing people," police said.

William Spengler, 62, set his home and a car on fire early Monday morning with the intention of setting a trap to kill firefighters and to see "how much of the neighborhood I can burn down," according to the note he wrote and which police found at the scene. The note did not give a reason for his actions.

Spengler, who served 18 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1981, hid Monday morning in a small ditch beside a tree overlooking the sleepy lakeside street in Webster, N.Y., where he lived with his sister, police said today in a news conference.

Police said they found remains in the house, believed to be that of the sister, Cheryl Spengler, 67.

As firefighters arrived on the scene after a 5:30 a.m. 911 call on the morning of Christmas Eve, Spengler opened fire on them with the Bushmaster, the same semi-automatic, military-style weapon used in the Dec. 14 rampage killing of 20 children in Newtown, Conn.

"This was a clear ambush on first responders… Spengler had armed himself heavily and taken area of cover," said Gerald Pickering, the chief of the Webster Police Department.

Armed with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, a Mossman 12-gauge shotgun, and the Bushmaster, Spengler killed two firefighters, and injured two more as well as an off-duty police officer at the scene.

As a convicted felon, Spengler could not legally own a firearm and police are investigating how he obtained the weapons.

One firefighter tried to take cover in his fire engine and was killed with a gunshot through the windshield, Pickering said.

Responding police engaged in a gunfight with Spengler, who ultimately died, likely by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

As police engaged the gunman, more houses along Lake Ontario were engulfed, ultimately razing seven of them. Some 33 people in adjoining homes were displaced by the fire.

SWAT teams were forced to evacuate residents using armored vehicles.

Police identified the two slain firefighter as Lt. Michael Chiapperini, a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department and "lifetime firefighter," according to Pickering, and Tomasz Kaczowka, who also worked as a 911 dispatcher.

Two other firefighters were wounded and remain the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.

Joseph Hofsetter was shot once. He sustained an injury to his pelvis and has "a long road to recovery," said Dr. Nicole A. Stassen, a trauma physician.

The second firefighter, Theodore Scardino, was shot twice and received injuries to his left shoulder and left lung, as well as a knee.

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New Scientist 2012 holiday quiz

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THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.

Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.

This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.

1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?

• a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
• b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
• c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
• d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth

2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?

• a) Poison celery
• b) Murder beans
• c) Inconvenience potatoes
• d) Death carrots

3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:

• a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
• b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
• c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
• d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years

4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?

• a) Mousegut
• b) Spider silk
• c) Braided carbon nanotubes
• d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium

5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:

• a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
• b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
• c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
• d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City

6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:

• a) Making a phonecall?
• b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
• c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
• d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?

7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:

• a) Whining
• b) Hitting the booze
• c) Jumping off a tall building
• d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost

8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?

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Son of late icon Kennedy rules out US Senate run

WASHINGTON: A son of late political icon Edward Kennedy said Monday he will not run for the US Senate in Massachusetts -- the same state his father represented for nearly five decades -- US media reported.

Edward Kennedy Jr's brother, former US representative Patrick Kennedy, had said over the weekend that the health care lawyer was seriously considering running for the US Senate seat that John Kerry will vacate if he is confirmed as secretary of state.

But Kennedy Jr, who lives in neighboring Connecticut, denied in a statement that he was seeking public office in Massachusetts.

"Although I have a strong desire to serve in public office, I consider Connecticut to be my home, and I hope to have the honor to serve at another point in my future," the 51-year-old said in the text cited by CNN.

Kennedy, who also owns a house at his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, said he was "extremely grateful for all the offers of support" of a potential run, and left the door open to running "at another point in my future."

A source familiar with his decision said Kennedy had ruled out a run because he did not want to uproot his family, did not feel right about moving from Connecticut to Massachusetts to run for the seat and Connecticut officials have urged him to stay for a later political campaign there, according to the Globe.

"He really wants to run," an unnamed family friend told CNN. "He just thinks this isn't the way to do it. Uprooting his family right now doesn't make sense."

If Kennedy had run, he likely would have had to face outgoing Republican Senator Scott Brown, who was defeated last month in his bid to be re-elected to the seat left vacant when the late Edward Kennedy died in 2009.

Just six weeks after Democratic consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren defeated Brown in the November election, President Barack Obama nominated Kerry on Friday to be his secretary of state.

If Kerry is confirmed in the post, Brown is expected to vie for his Senate seat. Among Democrats, US Representatives Michael Capuano and Ed Markey have hinted at a possible run.

-AFP/ac

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Customer claims Sprint worker said his fingers 'too fat' for iPhone

Does finger size really matter?

(Credit:
CNET)

It's possible you might put on a few pounds during this holiday season.

Might I suggest you perform additional exercises with your fingers? You know, so that they don't get too large.

This would seem to be extremely sane advice if you want to buy an iPhone from Sprint.

At least that's what one Sprint customer would have you believe. This customer says he billowed his way into his local Sprint store in order to get a replacement for his damaged
iPhone 4.

As told to Tom's Hardware, when he discovered he could get a free replacement, the customer thought this seemed like a sound value proposition.

The Sprint salesperson allegedly countered by telling the customer that the iPhone is "really a piece of s***."

I am all for creative salesmanship. This, however, seemed to go down as well as a restoration of the Mona Lisa involving acrylics and a hairbrush.

As many salespeople are, this one was apparently undeterred.

He allegedly went on to list all the many, colorful reasons why the iPhone is really, really "a piece of s***."

These included battery life, fragility, and size -- the last of which supposedly led to "your fingers are too fat for such a phone. You should get the Galaxy S3."

More Technically Incorrect

I would be stunned into emitting lava from my mouth had I not myself, with a slim-fingered witness at my side, enjoyed a somewhat similar experience at a Verizon store, where the salesperson did everything possible to unsell me an iPhone.

No, he didn't use the phrase "really a piece of s***." But he did offer that other phones were 10 times faster than the iPhone and that only Apple wants to push iPhones, Verizon doesn't.

I am sure that in neither case could the salesperson's iPooh-poohing be at all related to the amount of money the store makes (or doesn't) from the iPhone.

I have contacted Sprint to see whether the company has any comment about the digital size of customers who are eligible to buy an iPhone.

In this particular case, the transaction doesn't seem to have gone in Sprint's favor.

For the customer concluded:

"Okay [M], your nametag doesn't say 'Sprint Rep/Nutritionist' so don't tell me how I can't use the phone because of my 'fat' fingers." Fed up with his attitude and tone of condescension, I walked out, no phone in hand. I'd rather have a broken phone than to have to put up with such a rude person.

Yes, he thought the salesperson was fatheaded.

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

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4 Firefighters Shot, 2 Killed in NY 'Trap'

A man who served nearly 17 years in jail for killing his grandmother set a house and car on fire this morning in upstate New York and then began shooting at emergency personnel who showed up, killing two firefighters, police said.

In all, William Spengler, 62, shot four firefighters, killing two and severely injuring two more after setting his "trap," police said.

An off-duty police officer from Greece, N.Y., who responded to the scene early in the morning of Christmas Eve also was injured today.

"It was a trap," said Webster, N.Y., Police Chief Gerald L. Pickering, "set by Mr. Spengler who laid in wait and shot first responders."

Spengler, who was released from prison in 1998, was found dead at the scene following a shootout with police. He was believed to have killed himself with a bullet to the head.

As a convicted felon, Spengler would not have been allowed to own guns legally. Police were working to determine the types of weapons he used and how he obtained them, Pickering said.

Spengler was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 for "beating his 92-year-old grandmother with a hammer," according to state prison documents.

Several weapons were used, Pickering said, and, "probably a rifle was used to inflict wounds of the first responders.

"I know many people are going to be asking if they were assault rifles," Pickering said

There has been a week-long national debate about such weapons after one was used in a tragic school shooting in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14.

Four firefighters, two on a ladder truck and two more in their own vehicles, responded to 911 calls around 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. Spengler is believed to have hidden behind an elevated berm, shooting down on the firefighters and later police.

"Upon arrival, all [the firefighters] drew fire. All four were shot on the scene," Pickering said. "One was able to flee the scene. The other three were pinned down."

Police believe Spengler's sister may have been inside the home, and that he set it on fire.

The blaze spread, engulfing three nearby homes and damaging three more on a sleepy street next to Lake Ontario that police described as a quiet vacation community. The fire was not put under control until late this afternoon.

SWAT team officers used an armored personnel carrier to evacuate 33 residents from homes in the area.

Among the dead firefighters was Lt. Michael Chiapperini, a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department and "lifetime firefighter," according to Pickering. Chiapperini was a spokesman for the police department, ABC News affiliate WHAM reported.

Police identified the other firefighter killed as Tomasz Kaczowka, who also worked as a 911 dispatcher.

The chief, choking up, called the incident that shattered the quiet before 6 a.m. on Christmas Eve morning "terrible."

"People get up in the middle of the night to fight fires," he said. "They don't expect to get shot and killed."

Two surviving firefighters were in the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. Both men were awake and breathing on their own after surgery and were in what doctors are calling "guarded condition."

Joseph Hofsetter was shot once. He sustained an injury to his pelvis and has "a long road to recovery," said Dr. Nicole A. Stassen, a trauma physician.

The second firefighter, Theodore Scardino, was shot twice and received injuries to his left shoulder and left lung, as well as a knee.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released a statement calling the attack a "senseless act of violence" and the first responders "true heroes."

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments

Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity

Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems

Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory

Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?

Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission

Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more

The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire

Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products

The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory

2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead

The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer

Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began

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