Hong Kong leader survives impeachment bid

HONG KONG: Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers failed in an unprecedented bid on Wednesday to impeach the city's embattled Beijing-backed leader, after they accused him of breaking housing laws and urged him to quit.

The city's first impeachment motion, which accused Leung Chun-ying of lying, dereliction of duty and serious breaches of the law in a row stemming from illegal structures at his luxury home, was denied after eight hours of debate.

The 27 pro-democracy lawmakers who signed the joint motion -- which they said was a symbolic move -- voted in favour, while 37 voted against in the 70-seat legislature which is dominated by pro-Beijing members.

Wednesday's vote followed a protest on New Year's Day in which tens of thousands took to the streets to urge Leung to quit and to press for greater democracy, 15 years after the city returned to Chinese rule.

The former British colony maintains a semi-autonomous status, with its own legal and judicial system, but cannot choose its leader through the popular vote.

Leung took office in July after he was picked by a 1,200-strong election committee dominated by pro-Beijing elites, amid rising anger over what many perceive to be China's meddling in local affairs.

China has said the chief executive could be directly elected in 2017 at the earliest, with the legislature following by 2020.

Unauthorised structures are a politically sensitive issue in the space-starved city of seven million and demonstrators have used the scandal to press for universal suffrage in choosing Hong Kong's leader.

Leung secured the chief executive role after criticising his rival Henry Tang over illegal structures at Tang's home.

But he has since acknowledged and apologised for structures at his own home which were built without planning permission.

Maverick lawmaker "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, wearing a T-shirt reading "We topple a tyrant", accused the new leader of lying about his own structures during campaigning when he presented the impeachment motion earlier on Wednesday.

"He has used dishonest ways to win the election," he said.

Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, second in command in Leung's administration, said the motion was unnecessary and urged lawmakers to work together on policy and livelihood issues.

But Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau said the motion was a symbolic gesture to show the deepening public mistrust toward Leung, claiming the leader had "cheated his way to power".

"This is the first time we have a motion in the legislature to impeach a cheating chief executive," she said.

If the motion had been passed, the city's highest court would have had to initiate an investigation. At least two-thirds of the legislature would need to endorse a guilty finding before Leung could be removed from office.

Earlier, rival protesters traded barbs outside the legislature and security personnel had to step in at one point when an angry pro-government supporter charged towards the rival group, TV footage showed.

Leung's popularity ratings have fallen since the controversy, with discontent over issues including sky-high property prices and anti-Beijing sentiment remaining high.

- AFP/xq

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How Samsung might get featuritis under control

Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, talks about the company's TV features during the company's press conference at CES.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--Samsung has a serious case of featuritis, but it's trying to get better.

The Korean electronics giant has long been known for its push to include more and more features in its products, whether it's new hardware capabilities like NFC in smartphones or software like smart TV apps. Samsung uses such features as a way to differentiate its new gadgets from rivals and from its older products, and consumers typically like those add-ons because they're getting more for the same price. Win-win, right?

The problem is more isn't always better when it comes to device features. Rather, cramming unnecessary capabilities into products can make them confusing and difficult to use. Critics say this lack of focus sometimes distracts Samsung from investing in more vital items like TV picture quality. And when the features don't work well (as seems to be the case fairly often), it can reflect poorly on Samsung.

"It's an ongoing challenge for us," Kevin Packingham, chief product officer of Samsung's U.S. mobile business, told CNET. "You have hundreds of capabilities in the device that sometimes the user never becomes aware of even though they buy the product. We have so much innovation and technology built into devices that it can be overwhelming."

However, he and many other Samsung executives told CNET that simplifying the user experience is one of Samsung's biggest focuses for 2013. That sentiment echoed throughout the company's press events and meetings this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Samsung designers even made the point yesterday during a press panel that the company's new design strategy is "make it meaningful."

Of course, Samsung isn't the only company with featuritis. For electronics makers, there's a fine line between including too many features and not enough. While people may only access Netflix on their smart TVs, it's unlikely they'd purchase a product that didn't include a few more options. And while Apple's streamlined interface is often held up as a model for other operating systems,
Android device users would howl if they lost the ability to customize their gadgets.

In addition, one of those seemingly unnecessary features could turn out to be the item that makes a device a must-have gadget.

"They've got to keep throwing features at the wall and hope something gets people going 'ooh and ahh' and reaching for their wallet," IHS iSuppli analyst Jordan Selburn said.

The easel design of Samsung's 85-inch 4K TV is one of the most striking you'll ever see.

CNET's reviews team has panned some of Samsung's features in the past, such as saying the voice and gesture control on TVs is unnecessary and "half-baked" and the Smart TV suite in general is "cluttered" with too many apps and poor, overwhelming design. In mobile, CNET has criticized some Galaxy S3 programs like AllShare Play and GroupCast for being "unnecessarily complicated to set up and use."

However, Samsung during its
CES press conference on Monday highlighted several steps it's taking to make its products easier to use. That includes a revamped smart TV user interface, improved voice interaction for its televisions, and the integration of NFC technology into speakers to make it simpler to pair a mobile device with the system.

In addition, the Smart Hub application has been enhanced with more content -- movies, videos, and music -- and a new TV program guide. This augments Samsung's new S-Recommendation engine, which lists suggested content in thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. And it also has a new video discovery tool for its TVs and mobile devices that allows users to search for content in cable listings and streaming services.

Samsung also has ramped up its advertising that shows ways device owners can use its products, such as this spot on sharing a video via NFC by tapping two Galaxy S3s together.

"They don't even use the word NFC in these ads," Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart said. "That's a huge improvement for Samsung where in the past they might have simply put NFC in a device and said it had NFC."

Boo-Keun Yoon, president of Samsung Electronics, kicks off the company's press conference at 2013 CES.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

Meanwhile, TJ Kang, senior vice president of Samsung's media solution center, told CNET that Samsung is expanding its team that focuses on the user experience. Kang noted that his business unit, which develops the apps and services that come preloaded on Samsung devices, is one of the fastest-growing operations in the company.

Samsung has been hiring many people with expertise in creating a better user experience, he said, even luring away employees from rivals in Silicon Valley.

"These people are helping the existing teams come up to speed on creating the experience users really will enjoy," Kang said. "You'll begin to see that as part of this new video discovery service and many new apps and services we'll be launching this year."

While Samsung is taking many steps to ease its featuritis, it still has quite a ways to go. The company went a bit overboard with features for its 2013 TVs unveiled at the show, and users still have to navigate through many layers of settings to do certain things on their mobile devices.

But what it ultimately comes down to is how well those features actually work and whether consumers seek out Samsung products to get them.

"The era of pure technology push is long over," David Steel, Samsung executive vice president of corporate strategy, told CNET. "It's now less about smart and becoming more and more about the relevance of smart, the human touch of smart."

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Hospitals Flooded With Flu Patients

U.S. emergency rooms have been overwhelmed with flu patients, turning away some of them and others with non-life-threatening conditions for lack of space.

Forty-one states are battling widespread influenza outbreaks, including Illinois, where six people -- all older than 50 -- have died, according to the state's Department of Public Health.

At least 18 children in the country have died during this flu season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The proportion of people seeing their doctor for flu-like symptoms jumped to 5.6 percent from 2.8 percent in the past month, according to the CDC.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago reported a 20 percent increase in flu patients every day. Northwestern Memorial was one of eight hospitals on bypass Monday and Tuesday, meaning it asked ambulances to take patients elsewhere if they could do so safely.

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Most of the hospitals have resumed normal operations, but could return to the bypass status if the influx of patients becomes too great.

"Northwestern Memorial Hospital is an extraordinarily busy hospital, and oftentimes during our busier months, in the summer, we will sometimes have to go on bypass," Northwestern Memorial's Dr. David Zich said. "We don't like it, the community doesn't like it, but sometimes it is necessary."

A tent outside Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, Pa., was set up to tend to the overflowing number of flu cases.

A hospital in Ohio is requiring patients with the flu to wear masks to protect those who are not infected.

State health officials in Indiana have reported seven deaths. Five of the deaths occurred in people older than 65 and two younger than 18. The state will release another report later today.

Doctors are especially concerned about the elderly and children, where the flu can be deadly.

"Our office in the last two weeks has exploded with children," Dr. Gayle Smith, a pediatrician in Richmond, Va., said

It is the earliest flu season in a decade and, ABC News Chief Medical Editor Dr. Besser says, it's not too late to protect yourself from the outbreak.

"You have to think about an anti-viral, especially if you're elderly, a young child, a pregnant woman," Besser said.

"They're the people that are going to die from this. Tens of thousands of people die in a bad flu season. We're not taking it serious enough."

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'Exocomets' abound in alien solar systems

Exoplanets are used to the limelight – exocomets less so. Now, a fresh crop of comets found around alien stars suggests that these icy dirt-balls stalk solar systems across the Milky Way.

Discs of debris swirling around young stars clump up to form planets. Asteroids and comets are the leftovers. But until now, astronomers had not seen many examples of these intermediate clumps.

"We have evidence of the final state, which is planets," says Barry Welsh at the University of California, Berkeley. "We have evidence of the initial state, which is discs. But what about the missing link, the stuff in between?"

Speaking on 7 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Long Beach, California, Welsh said that excitement over comet-hunting may soon surpass that for exoplanets, of which there are now hundreds of confirmed finds and thousands of candidates.

"Exoplanets are just so last year," said Welsh. "2013, whether you know it or not, is going to be the year of the comet."

Bright tails

The first star found to host comets was Beta Pictoris in 1987. Three more stars with comets turned up before 1998. But in the 1990s the first confirmed exoplanets were spotted, so astronomers switched their focus to planet-hunting.

Welsh and colleagues have now picked up the cometary trail, discovering seven more stars with comets. The individual comets around alien suns are too small to see directly, so Welsh's team looked for the chemical signatures of their tails as they are heated by their host stars.

They used the McDonald Observatory in Texas to observe about 30 young stars between May 2010 and November 2012. They found that chemical signatures in some of the stars' light varied from night to night – a likely sign of gases being emitted by comets. Some of these comets survived the stellar encounter, while others likely disintegrated near the star.

Billions of worlds

Our solar system is thought to have gone through a phase about a billion years after it formed during which incoming asteroids and comets pummelled the innermost planets. Some think that this period of heavy bombardment may have brought water and the carbon-based building blocks of life to the early Earth.

That makes the presence of comets around young stars an exciting prospect, says Russel White of Georgia State University, who was not involved in the new work. If these systems have Earth-like worlds, they could be going through their own versions of heavy bombardment, he says. "It offers some confirmation that these solar systems are rich environments, with comets and asteroids and things like that – maybe even richer than our own solar system."

For now, Beta Pictoris is the only comet-bearing star also known to have a planet, a gas giant about ten times larger than Jupiter. Longer observing times with more sensitive instruments, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, might yield comets around "adult" stars, which are known to be rich in planets.

Also at the AAS meeting, Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported that 17 per cent of stars host a planet about the size of the Earth, amounting to 17 billion in the Milky Way alone. These aren't true Earth twins, though, as they orbit their stars closer than the planet Mercury orbits our sun.

The research also showed that 90 per cent of sun-like stars probably have planets of any size. "If you shoot a spaceship at a sun-like star, you're 90 per cent likely to hit a planet," Fressin says. "That's pretty huge."

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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India says two soldiers killed in clash with Pakistan troops

SRINAGAR, India: Pakistani troops killed two Indian soldiers on Tuesday near the tense disputed border between the nuclear-armed neighbours in Kashmir and one of the bodies was badly mutilated, the Indian army said.

The firefight broke out at about noon on Tuesday (0630 GMT) after an Indian patrol discovered Pakistani troops about half a kilometre (1,600 feet) inside Indian territory, an army spokesman told AFP.

A ceasefire has been in place along the Line of Control that divides the countries since 2003, but it is periodically violated by both sides and Pakistan said Indian troops killed a Pakistani soldier on Sunday.

Relations had been slowly improving over the last few years following a rupture in their slow-moving peace process after the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, which were blamed by India on Pakistan-based militants.

"There was a firefight with Pakistani troops," army spokesman Rajesh Kalia told AFP from the mountainous Himalayan region.

"We lost two soldiers and one of them has been badly mutilated," he added, declining to give more details on the injuries.

"The intruders were regular (Pakistani) soldiers and they were 400-500 metres (1,300-1,600 feet) inside our territory," he said of the clash in Mendhar sector, 173 kilometres (107 miles) west by road from the city of Jammu.

In Islamabad, a Pakistan military spokesman denied what he called an "Indian allegation of unprovoked firing". He declined to elaborate.

On Sunday, Pakistan said Indian troops had crossed the Line of Control and stormed a military post. It said one Pakistani soldier was killed and another injured.

It lodged a formal protest with India on Monday over what it called an unprovoked attack.

India denied crossing the line, saying it had retaliated with small arms fire after Pakistani mortars hit a village home.

A foreign ministry spokesman said Indian troops had undertaken "controlled retaliation" on Sunday after "unprovoked firing" which damaged a civilian home.

The deaths are set to undermine recent efforts to improve relations, such as opening up trade and offering more lenient visa regimes which have been a feature of talks between senior political leaders from both sides.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is a Himalayan region which India and Pakistan both claim in full but rule in part. It was the cause of two of three wars between the neighbours since independence from Britain in 1947.

- AFP/fa

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Google offers free Wi-Fi in Chelsea neighborhood

Google today is rolling out free public Wi-Fi in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City.

The free public service, which is being unveiled today by Google Chief Technology Officer Ben Fried and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), is the largest contiguous Wi-Fi network in the entire city.

When folks enter the Chelsea neighborhood, which spans Gansevoort Street and 19th Street from 8th Avenue to the West Side Highway, including the Chelsea Triangle, 14th Street Park, and Gansevoort Plaza, they'll have free access to a Wi-Fi connection provided by Google.

The search giant has been making a push in New York City for months to deliver free Wi-Fi to residents. In June, for example, the company announced that Google Offers was sponsoring free Wi-Fi in over 200 hotspot locations across New York City. Six MTA subway stations also were offered free wireless connections. Google also offers a fiber Internet service in Kansas City, KS.

This time around, Sen. Schumer sees the Wi-Fi rollout as a potential benefit to New York's "Silicon Alley" by aiding the city in attracting technology companies.

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Sea level rise could lead to a cooler, stormier world

A catastrophic rise in sea level before the end of the century could have a hitherto-unforeseen side effect. Melting icebergs might cool the seas around Greenland and Antarctica so much that the average surface temperature of the entire planet falls by a few degrees, according to unpublished work by climate scientist James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

While it might sound welcome, the temperature differences produced by the "iceberg cooling effect" could lead to even more climate chaos in a world already devastated by extreme weather. Winter storms, for instance, are powered by the temperature differences between the poles and the equator, so there might be storms of unprecedented ferocity.

And the temporary cooling would be deceptive. Due to the greenhouse effect, the planet as a whole would still be accumulating heat - it's just that vast amounts of heat would be going into melting ice and warming water. "It's a redistribution of heat energy," says Daniel Sigman of Princeton University, who studies the end of the last age and was not involved in Hansen's work.

Freezer door

To visualise the cooling effect, imagine being shut in a stiflingly hot kitchen. You could cool the air by flinging open the freezer and letting the food defrost. The kitchen as a whole will not lose heat as there is nowhere for it to escape to, but some of heat energy will go into defrosting the freezer rather than warming the air.

Most climate scientists think the "freezer door" will remain firmly shut this century, but not Hansen. He has longed warned that there could be a huge rise in sea level this century and, with colleagues Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy, he recently simulated the possible effects. Hansen included a brief summary of some of the results in an analysis of Greenland ice loss released in December.He told New Scientist a full paper is being prepared for publication, but would not discuss the details.

Assuming a disastrous 0.6-metre sea level rise by 2065, Hansen's model suggests the average global surface temperature would be just 1.5 °C warmer than in preindustrial times, compared to 1.9 °C without the iceberg cooling effect. With a massive 1.4-metre rise by 2080, the surface temperature would fall by 0.9 °C, instead of rising by 2.2 °C. Although most of the world would remain much warmer than now, northern Europe might cool to preindustrial levels and the UK might actually be chillier.

Other climate scientists are reluctant to comment before seeing the full details, but Sigman points out that climate modellers have long done experiments looking at the complex effects of melting ice sheets. These experiments also typically show regional cooling, but in Hansen's simulation the effect is much greater. The likely reason for the difference is because his simulation assumes a much more rapid acceleration of ice loss, doubling every 10 years.

Most other climate scientists think the ice sheets will only melt slowly, largely because this is what happened at the end of past ice ages. Hansen, however, thinks this logic is flawed. The reason that sea level only rose slowly in the past, he writes, is because the planet only warmed slowly. After the last ice age, for instance, it took 10,000 years for the average global temperature to rise around 4 °C. Now the world is on course to warm this much in less than 200 years.

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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Indonesia police investigate baby-for-sale online ad

JAKARTA: Indonesian police on Monday said they are investigating an advertisement offering two babies for sale at US$1,000 each after it was spotted on the popular auction and shopping website Tokobagus.com.

"We are still investigating the existence of the online advertisement," Jakarta police spokesman Rikwanto told reporters.

"We have asked Tokobagus how the advertisement came to be posted, for how long, and whether any transaction was made," he added.

The National Commission for Child Protection lodged a police report last week after spotting the posting, its chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait told AFP.

"There was a photo of a baby and a telephone number. We called the advertiser and he said he wanted to sell two 18-month-olds, a boy and a girl, for Rp 10 million (US$1,000) each," Sirait said.

"We were negotiating, talking about birth certificates when he suddenly hung up. We tried contacting him again but failed," he added.

"This seems to be a new modus operandi by baby-selling syndicates. We are very concerned and must stop this crime against humanity," Sirait said, adding that human-traffickers could be jailed from 15 to 20 years.

Tokobagus posted an apology on Twitter, saying the advertisement was a result of "pure human error and was unintentional" and had been removed.

Indonesians have been using local auction and shopping sites to sell anything from cars and jewellery to body organs such as kidneys, exploiting a loophole in local laws.

Hundreds of advertisements have appeared on Indonesian personal advertising websites offering kidneys for as little as 50 million rupiah each.

- AFP/xq

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Nintendo chief Iwata: Wii U sales 'not bad'

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in an interview published today that the Wii U's sales aren't so bad.

"At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn't as though stores in the U.S. had no
Wii U left in stock, as it was when
Wii was first sold in that popular boom," Iwata told Reuters in an interview published today. "But sales are not bad, and I feel it's selling steadily."

There does appear to be a slightly different scenario playing out with the Wii U. When the Nintendo Wii launched in 2006, it was impossible to find on store shelves for years. That resulted in massive lines at retailers each weekend, made up of consumers hoping to get their hands on the short supply of Wiis that came in off trucks. The huge demand helped the Wii become one of the top-selling consoles of all time.

The Wii U, however, is readily available. In many retail stores across the U.S., consumers will find Wii U units available. The Wii U is also available online from a host of retailers, including Amazon.

Nintendo has been bullish on the Wii U, saying last year before its launch that it anticipates selling 5.5 million units by the end of March. During its first week of availability, the Wii U hit 400,000 units sold in the U.S. Since then, however, Nintendo hasn't shared unit sales or said how likely it is to reach its lofty sales goal.

In his interview with Reuters, Iwata remained relatively tight-lipped on the Wii U's performance, careful to not say that it was performing exceedingly well or poorly. He did, however, acknowledge that his company's decision to launch a $300 Basic set alongside a $350 Deluxe version proved challenging.

"Specifically, inventory levels for the premium, deluxe package was unbalanced as many people wanted that version and couldn't find it," he told Reuters.

Nintendo is expected to reveal more details about its Wii U sales when it announces fiscal third-quarter performance later this month.

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