Newtown Parents Committed to Staying Put

The people of Newtown, Conn., and the surrounding towns are filled with fear and doubt in light of the rampage that turned their worlds upside down. Despite the uncertainty, however, there is one thing parents are adamant about: They're not going anywhere.

"I know it's an awful thing, but this town and the towns surrounding it, it's a big community where people come together and people know each other," resident Chris Roman said. "Growing up here, I would definitely stay."

He paused a moment, before saying with great resolve, "I'm definitely going to stay. One tragedy is not going to push us away."

Roman and his wife, Ellen Roman, are the parents of 16-month-old Stella and they have held her even closer since the Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning the gun on himself. He had killed his mother at her home earlier that morning.

"I don't think I've kissed her as much as I have in the past three days as I have the entire time she's been alive," Ellen Roman, 33, said. "I constantly am picking her up and kissing her and hugging her."

The new mom is still shaken by the shooting, gasping to choke back tears as she recalled hearing the news.

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"Before I even knew that anyone had died, before I even knew that anyone had been shot, I was bawling; just to know that gunfire had happened anywhere near a school in Newtown affected me," she said through tears. "This town is so small and it's such a tight community and everyone knows everyone so it's just, it just doesn't happen here. It just doesn't happen in this town."

Chris Roman, 36, said there's "a big hole to fill that will never be filled" in the community, and he hopes for change so that the only tricky conversation he'll have to have with his young daughter in the future is "the birds and the bees talk."

"It's something that we all have to deal with and work together and try to stop it from happening so I wouldn't have to explain it to her," he said of school shootings.

Other parents echoed the Romans' sentiments.

Maureen Pendergast is the mother of 11-month-old James and her 8-year-old nephew is a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"It's absolutely terrible," Pendergast said. "My nephew, Brian, was in the school when it did happen and James goes to day care right down the street here, so it's hard to say [Lanza] didn't stop into the day care."

She said Brian is "as OK as he can be" and that his parents are planning on putting him in counseling. Pendergast knows that healing will take time, but she plans on sticking it out.

"I want to stay," she said. "Overall, it's a very cute and quiet town. My husband has lived here his entire life and I like it. It's a tough community."

Others are equally committed, including Ana Deaguiar of nearby Danbury.

"I'm not going anywhere," Deaguiar, mother of 16-month-old Giovanni, said. "I've spent 11 years in Danbury and I don't think about moving at all. I want him to grow up here and not let this be the only memory there is of this state and this region."

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Gaming chair mimics a full-motion simulator

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

(Image: Greg Pease/Getty)

Multi-million-dollar full-motion flight simulators give trainee pilots a good approximation of the ups and downs of real flight, but the powerful hydraulic rams they are mounted on make them far too big, expensive and dangerous for the home. Gamers should take heart, though: a novel kind of gaming chair called a haptic seat might one day bring them at least some of the sensations of a full-motion simulator.

The idea is predicated on the fact that motion produces certain force effects on your body - you are pressed down into the armrests of your seat as a helicopter, say, moves upwards. So Fabien Danieau of Technicolor in Rennes, France, and colleagues at the nearby INRIA lab reasoned that a chair with armrests and a headrest that can reproduce these effects, in tandem with the strong reinforcing visuals on screen, could mimic complex motion sensations.

To test the idea, they rigged up a chair in which a headrest and two armrests were each moved independently by a commercial game controller called a Novint Falcon which has a strong force-feedback capability. They then wrote simulation software that uses the Novint system to move the armrests up slightly to make you feel you are dropping - and vice versa. Moving one armrest more than the other, meanwhile, makes users feel they are rolling to one side. Push the headrest forward a tad and you'll feel you've slowed down quickly - or pull it back a bit and you'll feel your head is being dragged back by acceleration.

All three units can be moved at once to provide more complex motion sensations like rolling as speed changes, too. In tests, the team let 17 volunteers try out the system: they reported a "realistic sensation of self motion". The plan now is to extend the number of actuators to boost believability: "The prototype could be extended by adding more points of stimulation, for instance, for the legs," the team say in their paper.

The jury-rigged system they put together looks odd, with the force-feedback units mounted on a steel frame surrounding the chair, but the idea is that the tech could one day be built invisibly into a commercial gaming chair "to simulate a sensation of motion in a consumer environment". There are other ideas that could be built into future chairs, too: creepy chair-back vibrators that introduce spine-tingling effects are in development by Disney, for instance. The team presented their work at a conference on virtual reality in Toronto, Canada, last week.

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Squash: David hurtles into world squash quarter-finals

GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands: Titleholder Nicol David showed how much she likes the music and warmth of the bay-side venue at Grand Cayman on Monday with an in-tune performance which carried her to the quarter-finals of the World Open in less than half an hour.

The six-time champion from Malaysia looked as strong a favourite as ever as she won 9-3, 9-2, 9-3 against Annie Au, the Hong Kong player who has become a regular in the world's top ten, but was allowed no chance to show how.

David struck the ball rhythmically and well, gave little away, and kept pressure on so relentlessly that it was easy to forget that the tournament had undergone a major shift of playing conditions.

"They made the ball bouncy, but at the same time this is a glass court so if you play your shots, it goes in," said David referring to the more favourable chances of putting the ball away compared with the first round which had been played on conventionally walled indoor courts.

David, occasionally a tense starter, seemed to be relaxed by the idyllic courtside view and sociable evening ambience and comfortably swept aside one of the tour's most improved and promising younger players.

"It's such a good vibe and everyone is in such a lively mood that I feed off the energy of it," she said happily. It was easy to see why, in three previous tournaments here, David has never been beaten.

She now has a rest day before taking on Madeline Perry, the tenth-seeded Irish woman who beat David back in 2009 en route to the final of the British Open in Manchester.

The oldest player in the top ten, Perry won 11-2, 11-9, 11-9 against the youngest, Nour El Sherbini, the 17-year-old Egyptian who still combines school with professional squash.

By contrast, Perry has been on tour for much of a decade and a half, though it was hard to tell that she was fully 18 years senior during this effective performance.

However, her opponent was not quite the same Egyptian who contested this year's British Open final against David.

Instead, El Sherbini became frustrated by her slow start, and not until the third game, when she had her nose ahead for a while, that the teenager looked like the player touted as David's successor.

Earlier, two English players, Alison Waters, the fourth seed, and Jenny Duncalf, last year's runner-up, also reached the last eight, where they will play each other.

Waters saved a game point in the second game to beat Samantha Teran, the 15th-seeded Mexican, 11-5, 12-10, 11-5, while Duncalf saved a crucial game point in the first game of her 12-10, 11-6, 8-11, 11-8 win over Camille Serme, the 14th seeded French woman.

That swung the match almost irrevocably, for Duncalf went on to take 11 out of 12 points, and by the time Serme had recovered it was well into the fourth game and too late to pull the deficit all the way back.

- AFP/fa

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View a 2000-year-old scroll of the Ten Commandments online

A fragment of a manuscript of the Ten Commandments.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Google is once again providing a journey into ancient history with online images of rare scrolls dating back more than 2000 years.

Courtesy of Google, in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the new Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is now home to detailed digitized photographs of thousands of biblical and non-biblical manuscripts. These ancient scrolls were discovered in a remote cave near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.

Among them, the scroll of the Ten Commandments may be one of the most fascinating. Dating back to sometime between 30 and 1 BCE (before the Common Era), the damaged yet still readable document in Hebrew is one of the earliest known copies of the Ten Commandments.

Other biblical scrolls include a copy of a section from the book of Genesis dated between 100 and 1 BCE, a Psalms document dated between 1 and 68 CE, and a fragment from the book of Leviticus dated between 1 and 50 CE.

You can browse among the various high-resolution featured scrolls or search for specific documents by discovery site, language, or content. You can zoom in to each manuscript to view the details up close and move your mouse from one section to another.

The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls project is devoted to preserving historical documents for future generations.

Each fragment of the manuscripts is imaged separately through a pain-staking process that captures not just the text but also the texture of the document. The process can even reveal characters that have faded and are no longer visible to the naked eye.

Google has played its own vital role in the effort by bringing these ancient documents to the Internet for anyone to see. Last year, the search giant set up a similar project that first brought some of the Dead Sea Scrolls to life online.

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Assault Weapons Ban: What Was It and Did It Work?

Editor's Note: This post is part of a larger series by ABC News examining the complex legal, political and social issues in the gun control debate. The series is part of ABC's special coverage of the search for solutions in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

When the 113th Congress is sworn in in January, expect the debate over gun control to have renewed urgency. Several prominent lawmakers have already come forth to call for a re-examination and re-working of our nation's gun laws in the wake of Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

While new legislation likely won't be introduced until after Jan. 3, statements from top Senators such as Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) suggest that new proposals could be similar to the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that was in in place from 1994 to 2004.

"I can tell you that he is going to have a bill to lead on because as a first-day bill I'm going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House -- a bill to ban assault weapons," Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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"High-capacity magazines -- devices that dramatically boost a weapon's firing power -- were prohibited from 1994 until 2004, when the federal assault weapons ban was in place... It's time to end the bloodshed and restore common sense to our gun laws -- beginning with a permanent ban on high-capacity gun magazines," Lautenberg wrote in an op-ed on the Huffington Post that he penned with Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed in the Long Island Railroad shooting of 1993.

What Did the Assault Weapons Ban Do?

Passed by Congress on Sept. 13, 1994, and signed by Bill Clinton later that day, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the manufacturing of 18 specific models of semiautomatic weapons, along with the manufacturing of high-capacity ammunition magazines that could carry more than 10 rounds. The ban had a provision that allowed it to expire in September 2004.

Several attempts were made in Congress to re-up the ban, the most recent in June 2008, according to the Library of Congress, but none of them have been successful. Republicans generally opposed it; high-profile Democrats typically shied away from the issue.

In the second presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, President Obama said he was interested in re-instituting the ban.

"Weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don't belong on our streets. And so what I'm trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally," the president said. "Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced."

Could a Ban Have Prevented the Connecticut Shootings?

It's impossible to say for sure, but it seems unlikely that if the law were still in place, as it was written, it could have done much to prevent Friday's tragedy. Lanza's primary weapon, the Bushmaster .223 rifle, is a type of AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, certain models of which were prohibited from being sold under the ban, but the Bushmaster model used by Lanza was not on that list.

Additionally, the language in the law was loose enough that a gun enthusiast who was interested in adding a type of AR-15 to their collection could have purchased one legally.

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NASA mission to end with twin moon smashes

Later today, two NASA spacecraft will smash into the moon. Individually named Ebb and Flow and together known as GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), the twin craft have spent most of the past year making the most detailed study of the moon's gravity field to date. At 1728 Eastern Standard Time (2228 GMT), that mission will come to a sudden end when the pair smack into the side of a lunar mountain. New Scientist takes a closer look.

What exactly will happen to the spacecraft?
First Ebb and then Flow will smack into a 2-kilometre-high mountain near the moon's North Pole at about 1.7 kilometres per second. Mission scientists expect the twin washing-machine-sized craft to make two small craters, each about 3 m in diameter and 20 to 40 km apart. The landing site was chosen partly to make the biggest crater, and partly to avoid hitting any historical spots like the Apollo landing sites – though in any case, the chances of doing that were only 8 in a million, said project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in a press conference on 13 December.

Why such a violent end?
It's to squeeze as much science out of the mission as possible, says GRAIL principle investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since the beginning of 2012, the twin craft have been orbiting the moon in single file, moving closer and farther from each other depending on slight variations in the moon's gravity due to the uneven distribution of matter inside it. GRAIL has obtained super-precise gravity measurements by orbiting very close to the moon's surface: since August, the spacecraft have spiralled down from an average altitude of 55 km to an average of 11 km on 6 December. "Our priority was getting to the lowest possible altitude and mapping as low as we could for as long as we could," Zuber said.

But nothing lasts forever, and the fuel is running out. "I'm hoping tonight a gas station will pull up next to our spacecraft and refuel it," joked Lehman. "But I don't think that's going to happen."

What will the impacts teach us?
The most exciting possibility is that the impacts will kick up a plume of dust and gas that can be analysed later by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as it flies by. The contents of the plume can help determine how the moon's atmosphere, which is so thin and tenuous that it is more properly known as an exosphere, interacts with the surface. The impact of cosmic rays, the solar wind and micrometeorites is thought to be ejecting particles of lunar soil into high-flying trajectories – giving rise to the exosphere.

So what is left to discover?
Samples brought back by the Apollo moon missions contained elements like iron, magnesium and calcium, that have not been observed in the atmosphere. But none of these were observed by the LCROSS mission, which crashed a school-bus-sized rocket stage into the moon in 2009, revealing evidence of water ice in the resulting plume.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has a spectrometer that can detect calcium. If the GRAIL plumes contain calcium, that would tell us two things, says LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California. First, it would confirm that one of the elements detected by Apollo really is in the lunar soil. It would also suggest that these elements can be kicked up by impacts. "That tells us something about how they're held in the mineral matrix, how they're liberated, and gives us a calibration point on our models," he says.

Could the GRAIL mission have ended in a different way?
"Not around the moon," Colaprete says. The moon's lumps and bumps mean it's difficult for spacecraft to maintain a stable orbit without burning a lot of fuel, especially at low altitudes. "What goes up must come down."

Can I watch?
Unfortunately, it won't be a very good show. The impact will happen in darkness, on the moon's far side, and the spacecraft are probably too small to make much of an explosion. The LCROSS plume was surprisingly wimpy, and the two from GRAIL will be even smaller. Still, NASA will describe the proceedings starting at 5 pm, Eastern Standard Time (2200 GMT). And if you gaze at the moon tonight, just think of the two new craters that will be taking shape on its dark side.

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Government can help in training of foreign workers: SNEF

SINGAPORE: The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) says the government can help in defraying the cost of training foreign workers.

In an interview with MediaCorp, SNEF president Stephen Lee said the federation is in discussions with various agencies to see how this can be done.

Mr Lee pointed out that the productivity of foreign workers must be raised in order for Singapore to achieve its long term productivity target of 2 to 3 per cent.

To recruit better skilled workers, the federation says a few industries are working with the authorities to implement a stricter pre-selection process where workers are tested for their skills before they arrive in Singapore.

Construction workers like Umesh Sundaram survives on less than S$300 a month. He earns about S$1,100 a month and sends most of it to his family in India.

The 25-year-old hopes he can earn more as his skills improves.

"I'd like to go for training to be more productive, so it can increase my salary," said Umesh.

The Workforce Development Agency (WDA) tells MediaCorp that only a small number of foreign workers are sent for training by their companies.

Mr Lee said foreign workers, who represent one third of the workforce, cannot be neglected.

"We must have some programmes to train foreign workers. Those who are already here, (we can) re-train them, to upgrade their skills...the more sensitive question is: who will take up the tab for this training?" he said.

"We are in discussions with various agencies to see how they can do that without putting undue burden on the government's training expenses," he added.

The government currently does not provide direct training subsidies for foreign workers.

Labour chief Lim Swee Say pointed out that employers are ultimately responsible for improving the productivity of migrant workers.

"The ownership of upgrading every worker cannot be with the government, or the tripartite partners, it has to be with the management," he said.

Observers noted that some companies hire foreign workers on short-term contracts, which reduce the incentive to send them for training.

However they pointed out that there were many reasons to train workers who stay with the company longer; HR experts believe foreign workers will be able to earn more when their productivity increases and can take on greater responsibilities.

"Cost is always a major consideration for any business and if the company has to come out with additional cost to train these foreign workers and with very minimal productivity gains, then it won't be (much of an incentive)," said Ronald Lee, managing director of PrimeStaff Management Services.

"However, if the government does come by and also support and provide finances to supplement this training, then it will be easier to incentivise the employers to provide more training," he said.

- CNA/jc

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Multi-deal Monday: Ultrabooks, security software, games, and more!

Happy Free Shipping Day, fellow cheapskates. Nearly 1,700 online merchants are offering "free delivery by Christmas Eve," so today might be the ideal day to finish up your holiday shopping.

That said, lots of stores offer free shipping every day, and I have no doubt we'll see lots of other "free shipping in time for Christmas" offers in the days to come, so don't fret too much if you miss FSD.

Today I couldn't decide on a single deal, so instead I rounded up a bunch of good stuff -- a little something for everyone. Take a look:

1. Asus Ultrabook. In the market for an ultrabook -- preferably one running
Windows 7? Today only, and while supplies last, 1SaleADay has the refurbished Asus Zen UX31 13.3-inch ultrabook for $579.99, plus $4.99 for shipping. Specs include an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB SSD. The only hitch: shipping could take 2-3 weeks.

The Asus Zen UX13.

(Credit:
1SaleADay)

2. Game time! For a limited time, GameFly has cut upward of 75 percent off the price of some great PC games. Among the top picks: Portal 2 for $4.99, Dishonored for $29.99, Civilization V for $7.49, and the Mass Effect Trilogy for $29.99.

3. Game time, iOS edition! Today only, Halfbrick Studios is offering all its iOS games for free. Your choices include Age of Zombies, Age of Zombies Anniversary, Blast Off, Fruit Ninja, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots, and Monster Mash. These normally range in price from 99 cents to $2.99.

4. Security and utility software. Need to re-up your security suite? Or maybe tune up your PC? For a limited time, Newegg has free-after-rebate deals on iolo System Mechanic, Panda Internet Security 2013 3-user, Webroot SecureAnywhere 2013 5-user, and other titles. Sure, there are freeware options that work nearly as well, but I always recommend getting commercial stuff when you can, especially if you'd benefit from having tech support at the ready.

Have a safe and peaceful day, my friends.

Deals found on The Cheapskate are subject to availability, expiration, and other terms determined by sellers.

Curious about what exactly The Cheapskate does and how it works? Read our FAQ.

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Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.

A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

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Newtown Couple Vow to Live for Dead Daughter

The parents of Jessica Rekos, a 6-year-old girl who died during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., said they are committed to keeping their daughter's memory alive despite their pain.

"We will talk about her every day, we will live for her," Krista Rekos told ABC News. "We will make sure her brother knows what an amazing person she was."

Richard and Krista Rekos say that talking about Jessica, who loved horseback riding and whom they called the CEO of their family, brings tiny moments of comfort.

CLICK HERE for full coverage of the massacre at the elementary school.

"Jessica loved writing, and she would often leave us little notes all over the house," Rekos said. "They would just say, 'I love you so much.'

"She was a ball of fire, she ruled the roost," Krista Rekos said.

When the call came Friday morning that Sandy Hook Elementary was on lockdown, Krista Rekos rushed in disbelief through the town where she and her husband were raised, a place they had always felt safe.

"I was running, and I kept thinking, 'I'm coming for you honey, I'm coming,'" she said, choking up.

CLICK HERE to read about the "hero teacher," the principal and 20 children who lost their lives.

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Richard Rekos said they initially had little information on what had happened.

"We had no idea at that point," he said. "We thought, OK, the reports are that one or two people may have been injured and taken to hospitals. There was still hope, that the children were hiding, there was still so much hope at that point."

The couple said that they walked around the firehouse, thinking that maybe Jessica had been taken there.

"I knew exactly what she was wearing, and I was hoping to see her little ponytail run around the corner, and her jacket and her black glittery Uggs that she had on that morning," Krista Rekos said.

Finally, around 1:15 p.m., everyone was asked to sit down, and a police officer said 20 children had been killed.

"We couldn't get a straight answer," Richard Rekos said. "There's so much panic and confusion when that announcement was made, the life was just sucked out of the room. And you know, I just point-blank found a state trooper and said, 'Are you telling me that standing here as a parent that my daughter is gone?' And he said, 'Yes.'"

The Rekoses were asked to stay at the firehouse to identify their daughter's body but, overcome with grief, they left in disbelief. The couple went home, and got into their daughter's bed, staying there until about 1 a.m., they said.

At that point there was a knock on the door and a police officer said that Jessica was dead.

"It just confirmed the nightmare, it's not real," Krista Rekos said. "It's still not real that my little girl who's so full of life and wants a horse so badly, and who was going to get cowboy boots for Christmas, isn't coming home."

The couple said the pain is just settling in. But equally strong is their commitment to keeping their daughter's memory alive.

The parents said that their 6-year old family powerhouse, with an enormous heart, will forever be their angel who left behind love notes that are still being found.

"This morning I found a little journal, and it was exactly what I needed, because it says, 'I love you so much momma, love Jessica,'" her mother said.

"It was like she was telling me she was watching us and she knows how hard this must be for us, and she wants us to know she loved us, and she knows how much she was loved."

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