Obama: Don't Hold Middle-Class Tax Cuts Hostage

Dec 1, 2012 6:00am

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

President Obama is urging Congress to extend tax breaks for the middle class, saying it’s “unacceptable for some Republicans in Congress to hold middle class tax cuts hostage simply because they refuse to let tax rates go up on the wealthiest Americans.”

With the clock ticking toward the so-called “fiscal cliff,” Obama asked lawmakers in his weekly address to “begin by doing what we all agree on” and extend the middle class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.

Read: Cliff Dive: A Stalemate and a Scrooge Christmas

“With the issue behind us, we’ll have more time to work out a plan to bring down our deficits in a balanced way, including by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more, so we can still invest in the things that make our nation strong,” he said from a toy manufacturing facility in Hatfield, Pa., where he delivered a similar message to workers Friday.

The president has launched a public campaign to try and force Republicans to sign on to his position on the expiring Bush tax cuts, asking them to pass a Senate bill that would maintain low middle class tax rates while allowing them to go up on the top income earners.

“If we can just get a few House Republicans on board, I’ll sign this bill as soon as Congress sends it my way,” he said.

Read: Could Outgoing Republicans Hold Keys to ‘Fiscal Cliff’?

Earlier this week, the White House put forth a deficit reduction proposal to avert the looming tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in on Jan. 1, which included $1.6 trillion in tax increases over the next 10 years, $50 billion in new stimulus spending, $400 billion in unspecified Medicare cuts, and a measure to effectively end Congress’s ability to vote on the debt limit.  The offer, which closely mirrors the president’s previous deficit-reduction plans, lacked concessions to Republicans, including detailed spending cuts, and was strongly rejected.

Since then, as House Speaker John Boehner put it, negotiations between the White House and House Republicans have come to a “stalemate.”

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Friday Illusion: Mystery mirror reveals missing banana

Joanna Carver, reporter

There are no editing tricks involved and it's not CGI. In this video, filmed in one continuous shot, a banana vanishes before your eyes. Of course, the disappearance could be explained by some sleight of hand, but what's even more mysterious is the reflection that seems to linger behind.

The illusion was produced by psychologist Richard Wiseman, well-known for tricks that demonstrate the quirks of human perception. Magic can trick our brain into believing the impossible, even when it violates rules of the physical world. Previously, we showed you Wiseman's ball-in-glass trick, where he appears to reach through a glass to snatch a ball, and an illusion where his head seems to vanish.

So can you solve the mirror trick? Let us know in the Comments section below and the first person to post the correct answer will win a New Scientist goodie bag.

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WP says SMRT must address workers' grievances better

SINGAPORE: The Workers' Party said it is disappointed that it has taken a strike to bring to the forefront the bus drivers' grievances about their pay and living conditions.

In a statement issued on Friday evening, the party said the strike signals a failure in the labour dispute settlement process within SMRT.

It said while much attention this week has focused on the grievances of the bus drivers from China, SMRT must also address legitimate concerns that have been raised by all its bus drivers since the recent revision of salaries and work hours.

WP said its MPs will be asking questions about the four cases of drivers charged with instigating the illegal strike during the next sitting of Parliament.

- CNA/fa

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Name your own price for a THQ game bundle (PC)

Forget no-name indie games; the Humble THQ Bundle includes some top-rated mainstream titles.

(Credit:
Humble Bundle)

Got plans this weekend? Cancel 'em.

The Humble Bundle folks have put together what is arguably the best game bundle ever. It's called the Humble THQ Bundle, and it comes with six top-rated action/strategy games -- plus a seventh if you beat the average purchase price.

I'm going to start with that bonus game first, because it really kind of defines the whole bundle. It's Saints Row: The Third, which scored an 8.5 on GameSpot when it debuted just one year ago. Price if purchased from Steam: $39.99. Average bundle price (at this writing) you need to beat to get the game: $5.70.

So, yeah, if you pay at least $5.71, you'll get Saints Row: The Third, plus a seriously impressive roster of other titles:

As you can see from clicking through to their reviews, every single one of these games scored at least an 8.0, the exception being the 6.0-rated Tales of Valor expansion for Company of Heroes.

Even so, there's an embarrassment of gaming riches to be had in this bundle, and the Humble bundlers continue to do good works by letting you divvy up your payment among charities, the game developers, and themselves -- however you want to mix it up.

Most game bundles include indie titles that most folks have never heard of. There's nothing wrong with that -- lots of this indie games are gems -- but it's nice to see a bundle with some big names. If you're a gamer, this is too good to pass up. Check out the overview video below.

Bonus deal: Finally, USB 3.0 hard drives are getting cheap! For a limited time, and while supplies last, TigerDirect has the Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 3.0 hard drive for $49.99 shipped. That's after claiming a $30 mail-in rebate (PDF), which is available today only.

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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Pictures: Inside the World's Most Powerful Laser

Photograph courtesy Damien Jemison, LLNL

Looking like a portal to a science fiction movie, preamplifiers line a corridor at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Preamplifiers work by increasing the energy of laser beams—up to ten billion times—before these beams reach the facility's target chamber.

The project's lasers are tackling "one of physics' grand challenges"—igniting hydrogen fusion fuel in the laboratory, according to the NIF website. Nuclear fusion—the merging of the nuclei of two atoms of, say, hydrogen—can result in a tremendous amount of excess energy. Nuclear fission, by contrast, involves the splitting of atoms.

This July, California-based NIF made history by combining 192 laser beams into a record-breaking laser shot that packed over 500 trillion watts of peak power-a thousand times more power than the entire United States uses at any given instant.

"This was a quantum leap for laser technology around the world," NIF director Ed Moses said in September. But some critics of the $5 billion project wonder why the laser has yet to ignite a fusion chain reaction after three-and-a-half years in operation. Supporters counter that such groundbreaking science simply can't be rushed.

(Related: "Fusion Power a Step Closer After Giant Laser Blast.")

—Brian Handwerk

Published November 29, 2012

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2 Towns Hint at Powerball Winners

The $587 million question on the identity of the winners in the historic Powerball jackpot is still a mystery, but residents in Missouri and Maryland say they already know who the two lucky winners are.

Employees and customers at Marlboro Village Exxon in Upper Marlboro, Md., said a tall, black, bald man held the winning ticket purchased in Arizona, according to ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV.

Meanwhile, speculation began running wild in the small town of Dearborn, Mo., when a factory worker named Mark Hill updated his Facebook account late Thursday, writing, "We are truly blessed, we are lucky winners of the Powerball."

Within hours, his family began celebrating, telling ABC News Hill is one of the two big winners.

"Just shocked. I mean, I thought we were all going to have heart attacks," Hill's mother, Shirley, said Thursday.

Hill's mother says her son and his wife, Cindy, have three grown sons and an adopted daughter from China, but the family has been struggling financially.

Hill works in a hot dog and deli packaging factory, but it was unclear whether he showed up for work Thursday night.

"I'm very happy for him. He's worked hard in his life; well, not anymore," Hill's son Jason said. "Well, I hope we all stay very grounded, stay humble and don't forget who we are."

Powerball Winners: Was Arizona Winner Caught on Surveillance? Watch Video

Powerball Winners: Video Out of Possible Winners Watch Video

Missouri Lottery official Susan Goedde confirmed to ABC News Thursday that one of the winning tickets was purchased at a Trex Mart in Dearborn, about 30 miles north of Kansas City.

Lottery officials won't confirm whether Hill is the winner but family members offered another clue: Some of the winning numbers turned out to be the jersey numbers of some all-star Kansas City Royals baseball players, Hill's favorite team.

Hall of Fame third basemen George Brett wore 5; Willie Wilson 6; Bo Jackson 16.

The winning numbers were 5, 23, 16, 22 and 29; Powerball was 6.

Hill did not respond to ABC News' requests for comment.

In Maryland, surveillance cameras at the Upper Marlboro gas station captured the apparent winner walking into the store Thursday afternoon, digging into his chest pocket for his lottery tickets. After a few seconds of scanning the wad of tickets, the man began jumping up and down, pumping his arms.

The man gave the tickets to store manager Nagassi Ghebre, who says the six Powerball numbers was on the ticket, which the apparent winner said he bought in Arizona.

"And then he said, 'I got to get out of here,'" employee Freddie Lopez told WJLA.

But before leaving, the possible winner felt the need to check again to see whether he really had the ticket that millions of Americans dreamed of having.

"He says, 'Is this the right number? I don't know.' And I said, 'Yeah that's the numbers. You got them all,'" customer Paul Gaug told WJLA.

Employees and customers said the main stuck around for a few more seconds shouting, "I won," before leaving.

"He came back a minute later and said, 'I forgot to get my gas. What am I thinking?'" Lopez said.

The man drove out of the gas station in a black car and on a full tank of gas with a cash payout of $192.5 million coming his way.

"He said he lives in Maryland. I'm pretty sure," Gaug said.

The possible jackpot winner was wearing bright neon clothing and store employees told WJLA that he appeared to be a highway or construction worker.

Arizona lottery officials told WJLA that if the man does have the winning ticket, it needs to be redeemed within 180 days of the drawing in Arizona.

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Junk radio signals track all space debris in one go

Call it Junk FM. Rogue signals from your radio may help warn about space debris on a dangerous collision course with Earth.

Stray FM signals from radios, bouncing back off space junk, could allow astronomers to track the whole population of space debris, suggest preliminary tests conducted this week at the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in Western Australia.

More than 21,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimetres are currently zipping around Earth at speeds of around 7 kilometres per second, according to NASA. Friction created by brushes with Earth's upper atmosphere can sometimes cause pieces of space junk to drop from orbit, creating a small but real risk for humans.

Meanwhile, millions of smaller pieces in orbit present a serious risk to satellites. This space junk is spotted and tracked using traditional radar or lasers, but the system has its limits.

"The best techniques at the moment can track a max of about 200 bits of debris a day," says Steven Tingay, director of the MWA from Curtin University in Western Australia. "If we can get thousands simultaneously, we could almost get the whole population of space debris in a night."

ISS test

The MWA is a set of some 2000 radio antennas spread out over 3 kilometres. Because of its extraordinarily wide field of view, the MWA can continuously track objects rather than just calculate their orbits from snapshots, Tingay says. That will improve our understanding of how much space junk exists and how much more is being created. "We can quickly characterise it after a launch or a collision," he says.

Continuous tracking would also improve orbital modelling in general and allow better protection of space assets, Tingay says.

To test the radio-tracking concept, the team used the MWA to pick up FM signals rebounding off the International Space Station, which is more than 100 metres wide. The team could clearly track the orbiting lab as it moved about 8 kilometres.

"This first observation gives us some great data to work on," says Tingay. Now that they know it works, the technique should be easy to scale down to objects as small as 10 centimetres, he says.

So far, the telescope has been using only a quarter of its antennas at a time, Tingay adds. Next year it will begin operating at full capacity. "The main thing the final instrument will give is four times more sensitivity, which broadly translates to four times smaller space debris," he says.

"It's a great idea," says Fred Watson, head of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran. "If you're looking at the whole sky you really have the potential to map the space debris. But it's not the total panacea." There would be some lower limit to the size of debris FM signals could track, he says, and bits only a few millimetres wide can still do damage.

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S R Nathan Fellowship set up for foreign dignitaries' training

SINGAPORE: Starting next year, a new high-level fellowship honouring former Singapore President S R Nathan will see foreign officials, such as cabinet ministers, parliamentarians and mayors, coming to Singapore on customised training visits that meet their interests and needs.

The S R Nathan Fellowship will be part of the Singapore Cooperation Programme (SCP), which provides technical assistance to other countries.

Primarily focused on ASEAN, the programme provides training and experience in areas such as public administration, port management, economic development and civil aviation.

Over the past two decades, SCP has trained over 80,000 officials from 170 countries.

Speaking at SCP's 20th anniversary on Thursday evening, Foreign Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam, said going forward, SCP will improve and customise its existing programmes.

He added that Singapore is partnering international organisations and countries such as the US in the effort.

"We have already started on all of this. In January this year, to support Myanmar's efforts in reform, we put together an enhanced technical assistance package tailored to Myanmar's present needs.

"In February we signed an MOU with Hillary Clinton to establish the Singapore-US Third Country Training Programme, primarily in support of ASEAN's community building efforts.

"We have also developed a new programme on sustainable development and climate change focused on small island states and the least developed countries."

Also speaking at the event, former Singapore President S R Nathan said he hopes the participants of the Fellowship will not regard their visit to Singapore as a one-off contact, but the start of a long and meaningful journey filled with conversations with their Singaporean counterparts.

- CNA/lp

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AT&T yet again the worst-rated carrier in U.S.

More bad news for AT&T.

Consumer Reports has released its annual carrier ratings. And just as it had in the last two years, AT&T landed in last place, far behind the top major carrier in the company's roundup, Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless fared somewhat well in the study, earning relatively strong marks on voice and data. The only bright spot in AT&T's review was its 4G LTE network, which actually beat out its chief competitor in this year's study.

Spring and T-Mobile landed between Verizon and AT&T.

For its part, AT&T isn't ready to back down. In a statement to CNET, an AT&T spokesperson made clear that the company is always working on delivering a better customer experience.

"While delivering an even better customer experience is a never-ending job, we're pleased that our customers rate their 4G experience as best of any carrier," the spokesperson told CNET. "We've invested significantly to deliver unique advantages, including offering the nation's largest 4G network, which enables the fastest
iPhone 5 downloads and simultaneous talk and surf."

Consumer Reports' survey examines voice, data, and customer service across the wireless space. Although Verizon was tops among major carriers, across the industry, it landed in the middle of the pack. Smaller carriers, including Consumer Cellular, U.S. Cellular, and Credo Mobile, landed above the major carriers in the Consumer Reports study.

Consumer Cellular, along with Credo, are actually mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that rely on other carriers' networks to deliver their service. Interestingly, Consumer Cellular relies on AT&T's network. Credo uses Sprint's network.

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again.

Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure ailments from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 (U.S.) per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.

Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.

"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."

And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.

From Worm to Pill

But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.

De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."

Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region are of the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, locally known as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.

Brave New Worm

Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.

De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.

"There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough," says de Moor. "But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable." If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."

Ancient Chinese medical traditions—which also use ground tiger bones as a cure for insomnia, elephant ivory for religious icons, and rhinoceros horns to dispel fevers—are controversial but popular. Such remedies remain in demand regardless of scientific advancement—and endangered animals continue to be killed in order to meet that demand. While pills using cordycepin from farmed fungus might someday replace yartsa gunbu harvesting, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are disappearing much quicker than worms.

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