Battle of the bottle: How to curb overindulgers

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Airbus lost top spot to Boeing in 2012

TOULOUSE, France - European group Airbus lost its top spot as the world's biggest maker of airliners to the US giant Boeing last year, but did better than expected and sees big sales this year, it said on Thursday.

Publishing results just as Boeing is hit by a crisis of confidence in its Dreamliner plane after a series of incidents, Airbus said that last year it delivered 588 aircraft to 89 customers, a record after 534 deliveries in 2011.

But sales of the flagship superjumbo A380, the biggest airliner in the world, disappointed, coming in at about one third of the target figure after a problem was discovered with the wings which the company says is now behind it.

Airbus sold a total of 833 aircraft last year, far more than the initial target figure of 650, chief executive Fabrice Bregier told a press conference near where Airbus is based at Toulouse, southern France.

However, the sales figure was far lower than the record of 1,419 sales in 2011.

Boeing delivered 601 airliners last year and took 1,203 orders.

For this year, Airbus expects to take 700 orders, excluding any cancellations, and to deliver more than 600 planes.

The order book now total 4,682 planes representing about eight years of production work.

Airbus said that it hoped that its new long-range A350 aircraft would make its maiden flight at the end of June or beginning of July.

Referring to the A350, Bregier said: "We have made reasonable good progress but I will keep cautious until the end.

"For the first flight, we expect it by mid of this year which is a big milestone, mid means end of June or early July...We are not optimistic nor pessimistic but realistic."

He added: "I'm very humble. Lots of risks are behind us but I'm interested in what is in front (of us)."

Of the 833 net orders last year, allowing for 81 cancellations, 739 were for medium-range A320-type airliners, popular with low-cost airlines, and of those 478 were for the "neo" version with new more fuel-efficient engines. The orders also comprised 58 long-haul A330 aircraft and 27 of the future A350.

Airbus booked orders for nine of its A380 superjumbo jetliners.

Bregier said that Airbus, the main part of the giant European EADS aerospace group, had exceeded its targets in terms of new orders booked and of completed aircraft delivered, even though sales of the superjumbo had underperformed.

Airbus had counted on selling 30 of the superjumbos but this target was knocked off course by the discovery of micro-cracks in the wings which cooled some customer interest.

Bregier said that this problem had been "resolved" and said he expected that this year the company would take 25 orders and would also deliver 25 of the enormous aircraft.

Referring to the position of Airbus in the global market and to the "neo" version, Bregier observed: "When we do better than expected we can be satisfied. When we see we are still in the leading position on neo market, we can be satisfied."

He said: "We started earlier with a good product. If we do the right job and I plan to do the right job, it's a huge advantage."

In view of the rapid growth, the airline has recruited a net number of 7,000 people in the last two years, hiring 10,000 while 3,000 have left for normal reasons.

The company cut 10,000 jobs between 2007 and 2009 as it restructured after a severe crisis over delays to the superjumbo programme which revealed weaknesses in the industrial workflow system.

The company now employs 59,000 people and expects to recruit 3,000 this year.

This is in contrast to many substantial employers in France which are restructuring with big job cuts, and the economy as a whole is struggling to boost its export performance and raise the niche speciality of its industrial products.

The Airbus aircraft are built mainly in Germany, Britain and Spain, and in France where they are assembled in Toulouse.

- AFP/ir

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Playboy hit with $160,000 fine over child restrictions

Playboy has been hit with a hefty fine for allegedly making it too easy for children to access pornographic material on its Web sites.

Ofcom, the U.K.'s communications regulator and competition authority, announced yesterday that it has fined Playboy 100,000 British pounds ($160,200) for failing to include "acceptable controls" ensuring a person viewing pornographic material on Playboy TV and Demand Adult was aged 18 and over.

Ofcom charged Playboy with "failing to protect children from potentially harmful pornographic material," adding that the failure was "serious, repeated, and reckless."

Playboy did have age restrictions in place on Demand Adult and Playboy TV. In the first case, Demand Adult asked that users click a button labeled "Enter I am over 18" before being able to view hardcore material. Upon paying with a debit card, they could access more material. With Playboy TV, users were asked to "self-certify their age," according to Ofcom.

Despite those measures, Ofcom argues that the controls are not "effective age verification systems."

Ofcom didn't say what would constitute an "effective" verification system. However, the organization pointed to Rule 11 of the Authority for Television On Demand rules:

If an on-demand programme service contains material which might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of persons under the age of eighteen, the material must be made available in a manner which secures that such persons will not normally see or hear it.

CNET has contacted Playboy for comment on the Ofcom fine. We will update this story when we have more information.

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6 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You

Photograph by AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

The planet keeps getting hotter, new data showed this week. Especially in America, where 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded, by far. Every few years, the U.S. federal government engages hundreds of experts to assess the impacts of climate change, now and in the future.

From agriculture (pictured) to infrastructure to how humans consume energy, the National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Committee spotlights how a warming world may bring widespread disruption.

Farmers will see declines in some crops, while others will reap increased yields.

Won't more atmospheric carbon mean longer growing seasons? Not quite. Over the next several decades, the yield of virtually every crop in California's fertile Central Valley, from corn to wheat to rice and cotton, will drop by up to 30 percent, researchers expect. (Read about "The Carbon Bathtub" in National Geographic magazine.)

Lackluster pollination, driven by declines in bees due partly to the changing climate, is one reason. Government scientists also expect the warmer climate to shorten the length of the frosting season necessary for many crops to grow in the spring.

Aside from yields, climate change will also affect food processing, storage, and transportation—industries that require an increasing amount of expensive water and energy as global demand rises—leading to higher food prices.

—Daniel Stone

Published January 16, 2013

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Notre Dame: Football Star Was 'Catfished' in Hoax

Notre Dame's athletic director and the star of its near-championship football team said the widely-reported death of the star's girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and the player said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

The university's athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, said it has been investigating the "cruel hoax" since Te'o approached officials in late December to say he believed he had been tricked.

Private investigators hired by the university subsequently monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.

"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who they said they were.

"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video

Notre Dame's Athletic Director Discusses Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax Watch Video

MTV's 'Catfish' Series Pulls Back Curtain on Online Profiles Watch Video

Te'o said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te'o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te'o at Notre Dame and in the media.

"While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, 'I love you,'" Te'o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death.

Now, responding to a story first reported by the sports website Deadspin, Te'o has acknowledged that Kekua never existed. The website reported today that there were no records of a woman named Lennay Kekua anywhere.

Te'o denied that he was in on the hoax.

"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said in a statement released this afternoon. "We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her."

Swarbrick said he expected Te'o to give his version of events at a public event soon, perhaps Thursday, and that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until today's story broke.

Deadspin reported that the image attached to Kekua's social media profiles, through which the pair interacted, was of another woman who has said she did not even know Te'o or know that her picture was being used. The website reported that it traced the profiles to a California man who is an acquaintance of Te'o and of the woman whose photo was stolen.

"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," Te'o said.

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Why trees can't grow taller than 100 metres

TYPICALLY, the taller the tree, the smaller its leaves. The mathematical explanation for this phenomenon, it turns out, also sets a limit on how tall trees can grow.

Kaare Jensen of Harvard University and Maciej Zwieniecki of the University of California, Davis, compared 1925 tree species, with leaves ranging from a few millimetres to over 1 metre long, and found that leaf size varied most in relatively short trees.

Jensen thinks the explanation lies in the plant's circulatory system. Sugars produced in leaves diffuse through a network of tube-shaped cells called the phloem. Sugars accelerate as they move, so the bigger the leaves the faster they reach the rest of the plant. But the phloem in stems, branches and the trunk acts as a bottleneck. There comes a point when it becomes a waste of energy for leaves to grow any bigger. Tall trees hit this limit when their leaves are still small, because sugars have to move through so much trunk to get to the roots, creating a bigger bottleneck.

Jensen's equations describing the relationship show that as trees get taller, unusually large or small leaves both cease to be viable (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/j6n). The range of leaf sizes narrows and at around 100 m tall, the upper limit matches the lower limit. Above that, it seems, trees can't build a viable leaf. Which could explain why California's tallest redwoods max out at 115.6 m.

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Panel makes recommendations to raise quality of financial advisory industry

SINGAPORE : Singaporeans planning to buy insurance products can look forward to paying lower costs.

This comes after the Financial Advisory Industry Review Panel made a slew of recommendations to raise the quality and efficiency of the financial advisory industry.

They include proposals aimed at lowering the distribution costs of insurance products.

The panel reviewing the financial advisory industry has recommended measures that include raising the minimum education qualification of new financial advisers.

They also propose that a website be set up to make it easier for consumers to shop for financial products.

Lee Chuan Teck, assistant managing director for Capital Markets at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said: "The panel recommends that MAS work with the industry to develop a web aggregator that allows consumers to easily compare pricing, benefits and other features of similar products offered by different insurers."

A survey by MAS found that 80 per cent of Singaporeans are not prepared to pay an upfront fee for financial advice.

This led the panel to focus on how to lower distribution costs for insurance-based products.

It has proposed the introduction of a direct channel for consumers to buy basic insurance products directly from the insurers.

Tan Hak Leh, president of the Life Insurance Association, Singapore, said: "Any measures that lead to greater transparency would increase competitiveness and each player would then need to find ways to stay competitive in the market."

However, the financial adviser's role will not be displaced.

A financial adviser's services would still be required to sell some products.

Augustine Lee, president of the Association of Financial Advisers (Singapore), said: "Insurance (products) normally are sold and not bought, so you still need to have independent financial advisers to help you in terms of decision making and choosing the right product."

The Consumers Association of Singapore has welcomed the latest recommendations.

It said the main beneficiaries would ultimately be the consumers.

Seah Seng Choon, executive director of the Consumers Association of Singapore, said: "The issue about under insurance for Singaporeans may be addressed, now that the distribution costs can be lowered through competition."

MAS said it will consult the public on these recommendations and then decide on their implementation.

- CNA/ms

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Nintendo to combine handheld, console gaming divisions -- report

Nintendo's current corporate structure separating consoles and handhelds will be replaced, according to a new report.

Japan-based news outlet Nikkei is reporting today that Japan plans to combine its handheld and console divisions by February 16. The combined team will have 280 employees, made up of 130 employees from the console side and 150 from handhelds.

According to IGN, which was able to access the entire story behind a paywall, the team members will be organized by their specialties, including circuits, design, and others. Engadget claims to have spoken to a Nintendo spokesperson, which confirmed the news.

Nintendo has faced some trouble over the last few years as its latest hardware launches -- the 3DS and the
Wii U -- have failed to generate the kind of interest and sales of its previous releases. During December, for example, Nintendo could only muster 460,000 Wii U unit sales in the U.S., according to the company. NPD DisplaySearch, which releases game sales data for the U.S., said "sales of the
Wii U were lower on a unit basis when compared to the original Wii in December 2006."

It was a similarly troubling launch for the 3DS in 2011, when that device proved too expensive for consumers. After slashing the handheld's price, sales started to creep up.

By combining its handheld and console divisions, Nintendo believes that it will be able to deliver better products, according to Nikkei. The news outlet said that the combined effort will help Nintendo build next-generation hardware "that will turn heads." It's not clear what that means for the Wii U, which only launched a couple of months ago.

CNET has contacted Nintendo for comment on the Nikkei report. We will update this story when we have more information.

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NRA Ad Calls Obama 'Elitist Hypocrite'

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

As the White House prepares to unveil a sweeping plan aimed at curbing gun violence, the National Rifle Association has launched a preemptive, personal attack on President Obama, calling him an “elitist hypocrite” who, the group claims, is putting American children at risk.

In 35-second video posted online Tuesday night, the NRA criticizes Obama for accepting armed Secret Service protection for his daughters, Sasha and Malia, at their private Washington, D.C., school while questioning the placement of similar security at other schools.

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?” the narrator says.

“Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security,” it continues. “Protection for their kids and gun-free zones for ours.”

The immediate family members of U.S. presidents – generally considered potential targets – have long received Secret Service protection.

The ad appeared on a new website for a NRA advocacy campaign – “NRA Stand and Fight” — that the gun-rights group appears poised to launch in response to Obama’s package of gun control proposals that will be announced today.

An NRA spokesman said the video is airing on the Sportsman Channel and on the web for now but may appear in other broadcast markets at a later date.

The White House had no comment on the NRA ad.

In the wake of last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Obama administration has met with a cross-section of advocacy groups on all sides of the gun debate to formulate new policy proposals.

The NRA, which met with Vice President Joe Biden last week, has opposed any new legislative gun restrictions, including expanded background checks and limits on the sale of assault-style weapons, instead calling for armed guards at all American schools.

Obama publicly questioned that approach in an interview with “Meet the Press” earlier this month, saying, “I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”

Still, the White House has been considering a call for increased funding for police officers at public schools and the proposal could be part of a broader Obama gun policy package.

Fifty-five percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they support adding armed guards at schools across the country.

“The issue is, are there some sensible steps that we can take to make sure that somebody like the individual in Newtown can’t walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion.  And surely, we can do something about that,” Obama said at a news conference on Monday.

“Responsible gun owners, people who have a gun for protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship, they don’t have anything to worry about,” he said.

ABC News’ Arlette Saenz, Mary Bruce and Jay Shaylor contributed reporting. 

This post was updated at 9:32 am on Jan. 16 to reflect include comment from an NRA spokesman.

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Freaky feeling: Why androids make us uneasy

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