Syria again disconnects nation from the internet

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

On 29 November, three days after it was slated for dropping cluster bombs in a playground, Bashar Al-Assad's embattled regime in Syria has severed all external connections to the internet, cutting the nation off from cyberspace. Many cellphone networks are also down.

It's possible the outages have been ordered to stymie transmission of news reports of fresh atrocities - but the Syrian government insists that a rebel attack on a key internet backbone cable caused the severance of services.

That's unlikely, says internet analytics outfit CloudFlare.com, owing to the systematic way it appeared to have been taken down. The video above shows the internet paths out of Syria closing down, one at a time. And at 01:00 GMT on Friday the New Hampshire-based traffic analyst Renesys said starkly: "In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the internet."

The internet activist collective Anonymous claims to have undertaken its own analysis and has vowed revenge for the outage on behalf of the internet itself, rather than Syria's rebels: it has started a takedown programme targetting Syrian government websites around the world.

If Al-Assad's operatives did indeed take down the net (and they have done it before) they are failing to learn from Egypt's experience: a five-day internet outage in January 2011 did ousted president Hosni Mubarak no good at all. As Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim said later that year, technology can help to foment revolutions - but with or without it, it's the will of the people that's likely to prevail.

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Badminton: Olympic scandal prompts rule revamp

BANGKOK: The Badminton World Federation on Friday announced changes to Olympic doubles rules following a match-throwing scandal at the London Games, but said it would take no further action against coaches.

It said the new system, which will be introduced for the Rio Olympics in 2016, would "ensure such a regrettable spectacle is never witnessed in badminton again".

The BWF said that in the future, following the group stage, all pairs finishing second in their groups would be placed into a second draw to determine who they face in the knockout phase.

But pairs topping their group stage would have fixed positions equivalent to seeded placings in the knockout stage.

"This will eliminate any player's thoughts about actively trying to lose a match or matches, irrespective of other match results. Such a draw process can easily and effectively be made just after all group matches have been concluded," the federation said in a statement released in Bangkok.

Eight women's doubles players from South Korea, Indonesia and China were disqualified for trying to lose matches at the London Olympics.

The scandal prompted Chinese badminton star Yu Yang to say she was quitting the sport, although she resumed playing at the Super Series Premier event in Shanghai earlier this month.

In its statement, the federation said that the BWF Council had concluded it was "not legally feasible" to take further action against any coaches or entourages over the London Olympics case.

The federation noted that some of its member associations had already taken their own action, and said it had strengthened its own code of conduct.

The Korea Badminton Association initially banned two coaches for life but after an appeal reduced the suspension to two years.

The BWF also said its council had approved the trial early next year of an instant-replay line call system using cameras to show the exact place where a shuttle lands on the court.

- AFP/fa

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Apple's new iMacs now available online and in-store

A new iMac purchased and ready to walk out the door at Apple's 5th Ave. store in New York.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET)

Apple's newly redesigned iMacs are now available for order.

Apple has started selling the 21.5-inch model today both online and in its stores. As of this writing, Apple is saying that online buyers will have their 21.5-inch model shipped out in one to three business days. The 27-inch model is a bit of a different story. Although customers can preorder the 27-inch option today, Apple's site currently lists its ship date as two to three weeks.

At the flagship 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York City, the new
iMac was an invisible presence at 8:00 a.m. ET, when the 21-inch version of the latest all-in-one
Mac desktop became available for purchase. The older generation iMacs were still on the display table, and no one was lining up to be first in line to walk out with a new iMac.

According to a store employee, customers could buy the new iMac but it wouldn't be on display for a few hours. The machines were only recently received, and had to be loaded with the software used for the Apple products on display. Of course, the iMac doesn't have the buzz of the iPhone or
iPad, and it's much easier to have it delivered to you door than to lug it up the glass steps of the Apple store.

The new iMacs were unveiled last month during a special press event. The computer is just 5 mm thick at its edge around the display, but is thicker behind the screen where the PC components are. The 21.5-inch model starts at $1,299 for a 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor and 1TB hard drive. The low-end 27-inch option starts at $1,799 for a 2.9GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 and 1TB hard drive. All of the models come standard with one of a few Nvidia GeForce graphics cards.

CNET senior editor Rich Brown today posted his review of the new iMac, and gave the computer four stars out of five. Brown was pleased with the computer's "thin new design and a competitive, logical set of core component updates." However, he was frustrated by the iMac's lack of HDMI support.

Still, Brown said that the device's "overall polish [helps it] to maintain its leadership among high-end all-in-ones."

CNET's Dan Farber contributed to this report.

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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 Numbers: Two Winners Take Record Jackpot Watch Video

Powerball's Half-Billion Dollar Prize: Lotto Success Stories 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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A treasure trove of natural history opens

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

(Images: Natural History Museum)

Where can you see the pigeons that feature in Chapter One of the On the Origin of Species, next to a first edition of the book? Or the iguanodon teeth that sparked the discovery of dinosaurs? Opening this Friday, the new Treasures Gallery at London’s Natural History Museum displays some of the most influential and fascinating artefacts from the museum's collections in a single room.

In an age of shortening attention spans and information overload, the museum has condensed its collection into a one-stop mega-shop for natural history. But while some may balk at the notion of a boiled-down collection of greatest hits, the new gallery is well-named. The pieces within it - the first Neanderthal skull ever discovered, for example, or one of the emperor penguin eggs collected during Captain Scott’s 1910 expedition to Antarctica - are indeed treasures, and the stories behind them are captivating.

Take the foot-long tooth specimen sitting in a display case between a plate from Audubon’s The Birds of America - the most expensive book in the world - and the first meteorite seen to land in Britain. This dwarf elephant tooth from Cyprus was discovered by palaeontologist Dorothea Bate in 1901 and provided the first evidence of elephants on the island. Bate’s discovery supported the theory that elephants swam over from mainland Europe and then, constrained by the scarcity of food, evolved to be far smaller than their ancestors - roughly the size of a pig.

Bate, we learn, was a self-taught enthusiast. She talked her way into a job at the museum at the tender age of 19, having pursued her interest in fossils by battling up mountains near her home in Carmarthenshire, UK. She went on to pioneer the field of archaeozoology, looking at the impact of humans on their environment.

Where zeal for nature drove Bate to discover, other exhibits show it as a source of creative inspiration. Sparkling within a well-lit case are three glass models of marine invertebrates, deftly sculpted by the Blaschka family of Dresden, Germany. This father-and-son team, who are responsible for the glass flowers in Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, were so fascinated with sea creatures that they not only owned an aquarium populated with specimens from Naples’s marine zoology centre, but were in correspondence with biologist Ernst Haeckel, whose diagrams of microscopic organisms informed their work.

The curiosities on show are frequently backed by this type of engaging human story. A portrait of the museum’s founder Richard Owen sits next to the iguanodon teeth. The teeth were discovered by Mary Ann Mantell alongside a road in Sussex. Her husband Gideon, an amateur naturalist, saw a similarity between the fossil find and the much smaller teeth of the modern iguana. From this observation, he posited that long ago giant reptiles roamed the Earth.

A touchscreen betwixt the two exhibits tells a remarkably honest history of how Owen, an established biologist, wrested the mantle of dinosaur discovery from the Mantells, though Gideon - the son of a shoemaker - fought to overcome both his class and amateur status so that his theory would be accepted by the scientific elite.

The human side of science in days gone by is nowhere more obvious, however, than in the display of pigeon specimens gathered by Charles Darwin during his experiments on breeding (see photo above). Seeing his meticulous labelling and notes on the dead birds and skeletons conveys both his intense dedication and methodical approach, which we now know enabled him to formulate his world-changing theory. “It gives you an insight into Darwin as a curator, working with the collection, as a researcher, the kind of approach that he was taking,” says Jo Cooper, curator of the museum’s bird collection.

Ironically, it is a fossil of the earliest known bird that brings these stories into the present day of scientific research. The archaeopteryx fossil is the most valuable in the museum’s collection, and is held as the world standard for this type of fossil. A CT scan of the skull cavity in 2004 showed the similarities between the archaeopteryx’s brain and that of a modern bird. The fossil may yet hold more gems about the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. “We’re still researching it really intensively”, says curator Tate Greenhalgh.

The Treasures Gallery does what it says on the tin, and more. Far from providing a whistle-stop tour of groundbreaking discoveries and theories in natural history, these artefacts and the stories behind them draw you in - and will spur your curiosity to delve ever more deeply.

The Treasures Gallery is a permanent collection opening tomorrow at the Natural History Museum, London.

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US jobless claims recede, still show Sandy impact

WASHINGTON: US jobless claims fell back to 393,000 in the most recent week, the Labour Department said on Thursday, still showing the impact of superstorm Sandy which blasted the Northeast in late October.

Claims in the week to November 24 fell from 416,000 the previous week and 451,000 in the November 10 week.

But they remained well above the 360-380,000 range held most of this year.

The three weeks of high claims, much the result of the shutdown of the economy in and around New York due to the storm, pushed the four-week rolling average to 405,250.

Many companies in the region, especially small businesses, are still struggling to get back to normal nearly one month after the storm struck.

- AFP/de

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iPhone 5 clears network hurdle on path to China launch

Apple's
iPhone 5 is one step closer to launching in China.

The China Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center has approved the iPhone 5 for a "network access" license in the country. The license approval was discovered by the Wall Street Journal.

Apple is currently planning to launch the iPhone 5 on China Telecom and China Unicom networks. The company is reportedly hoping to bring the device to China Mobile, the country's largest carrier, but so far, no deal has been announced.

Apple's approval comes about a month after another regulatory agency, China's State Radio Management, approved two iPhone 5 models to run on the country's mobile networks. One model supported the China Unicom 3G network, while the other would work on China Telecom's CDMA network.

Now that the iPhone has received its Equipment Certification Center approval, it might not be long before the device ships. In the past, vendors that receive the approval launch their new handsets within a matter of weeks. If Apple follows that schedule, it would launch the iPhone 5 sometime in December, as expected.

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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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Two Winners in Record Powerball Jackpot

Winning tickets for the record Powerball jackpot worth more than $587 million were purchased in Arizona and Missouri.

Missouri Lottery official Susan Goedde confirmed to ABC News this morning that one of the winning tickets was purchased in the state, but they would not announce which town until later this morning.

Arizona lottery officials said they had no information on that state's winner or winners but would announce where it was sold during a news conference later in the day.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 5, 23, 16, 22 and 29. The Powerball was 6.

The jackpot swelled to $587.5 million, according to Lottery official Sue Dooley. The two winners will split the jackpot each getting $293.75 million. The cash payout is $192.5 million each.

An additional 8,924,123 players won smaller prizes, according to Powerball's website.

"There were 58 winners of $1 million and there were eight winners of $2 million. So a total of $74 million," said Chuck Strutt, Director of the Multi-State Lottery Association.

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

This is the 27th win for Missouri, ranking it second in the nation for lottery winners after Indiana, which has 38 wins. Arizona has had 10 Powerball jackpot wins in its history.

Players bought tickets at the rate of 131,000 every minute up until an hour before the deadline of 11 p.m. ET, according to lottery officials.

The jackpot had already rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner. That fact, plus the doubling in price of a Powerball ticket, accounted for the unprecedented richness of the pot.

Powerball Numbers: Two Winners Take Record Jackpot Watch Video

Powerball's Half-Billion Dollar Prize: Lotto Success Stories Watch Video

"Back in January, we moved Powerball from being a $1 game to $2," said Mary Neubauer, a spokeswoman at the game's headquarters in Iowa. "We thought at the time that this would mean bigger and faster-growing jackpots."

That proved true. The total, she said, began taking "huge jumps -- another $100 million since Saturday." It then jumped another $50 million.

The biggest Powerball pot on record until now -- $365 million -- was won in 2006 by eight Lincoln, Neb., co-workers.
As the latest pot swelled, lottery officials said they began getting phone calls from all around the world.

"When it gets this big," said Neubauer, "we get inquiries from Canada and Europe from people wanting to know if they can buy a ticket. They ask if they can FedEx us the money."

The answer she has to give them, she said, is: "Sorry, no. You have to buy a ticket in a member state from a licensed retail location."

About 80 percent of players don't choose their own Powerball number, opting instead for a computer-generated one.
Asked if there's anything a player can do to improve his or her odds of winning, Neubauer said there isn't -- apart from buying a ticket, of course.

Lottery officials put the odds of winning this Powerball pot at one in 175 million, meaning you'd have been 25 times more likely to win an Academy Award.

Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, provided additional perspective: You are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, he said; seven times more likely to die from fireworks, "and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria" (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

Segueing, then, from death to life, Garibaldi noted that even the best physicians, equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, can't predict the timing of a child's birth with much accuracy.

"But let's suppose," he said, "that your doctor managed to predict the day, the hour, the minute and the second your baby would be born."

The doctor's uncanny prediction would be "at least 100 times" more likely than your winning.

Even though he knows the odds all too well, Garibaldi said he usually plays the lottery.

When it gets this big, I'll buy a couple of tickets," he said. "It's kind of exciting. You get this feeling of anticipation. You get to think about the fantasy."

So, did he buy two tickets this time?

"I couldn't," he told ABC News. "I'm in California" -- one of eight states that doesn't offer Powerball.

In case you were wondering, this Saturday's Powerball jackpot is starting at $40 million.

ABC News Radio contributed to this report.

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