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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Football Star Manti Te'o Faces Tough Questions

Notre Dame's star linebackerManti Te'o faces a problem bigger than any running back he's had to bring down.

As the elaborate hoax about his dead "girlfriend" unravels, many questions remain to be answered, chief among them whether he was complicit in promoting the dramatic story of his girlfriend's death from leukemia. Te'o may soon be forced to tackle those questions himself.

"A lot of people are very suspicious when Te'o says he had no idea and he was just a sucker in this," Deadspin writer Timothy Burke said on "Good Morning America" today. "Why would somebody go to such great lengths to hoax him like that?"

Click here for 'Catfish' stars' advice on online dating.

Burke's Deadspin story broke the scandal, forcing Te'o and Notre Dame to admit the girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never existed. Notre Dame claims that Te'o is the victim of a "cruel hoax."

"[Notre Dame is] sticking to his story and they're going to, I think, fight and make every sort of attempt they can to prove he had no idea this was going on and that he was the unfortunate victim of a year-long prank," Burke said.

But it won't be easy.

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

"I think that there are some questions about when he became aware of it, simply because Notre Dame and Te'o's statement have indicated that he found out about it in late December, but he chose not to correct or identify when he was asked before the BCS Championship game about his girlfriend," he said. The championship game was played on Jan. 7.

Burke said he is particularly eager for answers about the story Te'o told of meeting his girlfriend in 2009 and his father Brian Te'o's statements about how the purported girlfriend used to visit Manti in Hawaii.

The university's athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a Wednesday night news conference that the school was not speaking for Te'o.

"At the end of the day, this is Manti's story to tell and we believe he should have the right to tell it, which he is going to do," Swarbrick said.

Swarbrick said that Te'o and his family came to the university last month with concerns that Te'o had been the victim of a hoax.

"The university immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax," he said. "While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators."

The school's investigators 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 she said she was.

"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."

Click here for more scandalous public confessions.

Swarbrick also said that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until Wednesday's story broke.

Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, has only issued a written statement so far.

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Low-power laser may keep blindness at bay

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Elton John has second baby via surrogate

LONDON: British pop star Elton John and his partner David Furnish have become parents for a second time, they confirmed on Wednesday.

The couple told Hello! magazine that they were "overwhelmed with happiness" at the birth of their son Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, who was born in Los Angeles on Friday to a surrogate mother.

"Both of us have longed to have children, but the reality that we now have two sons is almost unbelievable," they said.

The couple's first son Zachary was also born via a surrogacy arrangement in California in 2010.

"The birth of our second son completes our family in a most precious and perfect way," John and Furnish told the magazine.

"It is difficult to fully express how we are feeling at this time; we are just overwhelmed with happiness and excitement."

The "Candle in the Wind" singer, 65, has been in a relationship with 50-year-old film producer Furnish for almost 20 years and they have been in a civil partnership since 2005.

Last week, the couple's spokesman denied reports they had become parents again, but they have often spoken of their desire for Zachary to have a sibling.

The baby shares his middle name, Daniel, with one of John's 1970s hits.

- AFP/fa

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Developer allegedly outsources his whole job to China, fired

I imagine his work posture looked something like this.

(Credit:
HeWazARed/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Work is an overrated concept, created by those in power in order to subjugate those who are trusting or have several children.

This might, at least, have been the thinking of a developer who believed he had found a magical ruse to prevent him from being subjugated.

As The Next Web tells it, relying on a case study presented by the security team at Verizon,, the gentleman in question was very interested in Reddit, eBay shopping, and watching cat videos during working hours.

So he allegedly outsourced his work to China. Yes, all of his work. He did nothing at all -- workwise, that is, according to Verizon.

Nicknamed "Bob" by Verizon, the developer worked at a critical infrastructure company in the U.S.

However, the Verizon folks say he also attempted to perform this liberating ploy simultaneously on other companies -- presumably he was accepting freelance projects on the side.

More Technically Incorrect

What some might find amusing -- or even dispiriting -- is that his employers valued him highly, as the work was of an excellent standard.

Meanwhile, Bob's trousers were being handsomely filled, as he was paying the Chinese a mere 20 percent of what the work would cost in the U.S., Verizon said.

You might wonder how, given that everyone was happy, he was ever discovered. Well, apparently his company noticed in its VPN logs that there was odd and consistent activity occurring on a connection between it and Shenyang, China.

The developer had allegedly discovered a way to make log-ins appear that he was over there, rather than over here. Part of his ruse was to FedEx his RSA token to China. Yes, the actual thing.

Bob, you might think, was a bit of a lad, the sort of man who was loud at work and an excellent drinking buddy (before the third pitcher of beer, that is).

Not quite.

Verizon's report describes him as

Mid-40s software developer versed in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc. Relatively long tenure with the company, family man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn't look at twice in an elevator.

As my mother always warned me, it's the quiet ones you have to beware of.

Once the security people delved into Bob's computer, according to Verizon, they discovered invoices and all sorts of entertainments.

Though Bob was fired, it's unclear whether any steps were taken to retrieve the money he earned.

An enterprising manager might have decided that he had, in fact, performed an enormously positive service for his company.

Surely the wise thing to do here would be to offer the Chinese developers a permanent contract and hire no more Bobs.

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Mars Rover Finds Intriguing New Evidence of Water

The first drill sample ever collected on Mars will come from a rockbed shot through with unexpected veins of what appears to be the mineral gypsum.

Delighted members of the Curiosity science team announced Tuesday that the rover was now in a virtual "candy store" of scientific targets—the lowest point of Gale Crater, called Yellowknife Bay, is filled with many different materials that could have been created only in the presence of water. (Related: "Mars Has 'Oceans' of Water Inside?")

Project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said during a press conference that the drill area has turned out "to be jackpot unit. Every place we drive exposes fractures and vein fills."

Mission scientists initially decided to visit the depression, a third of a mile from Curiosity's landing site, on a brief detour before heading to the large mountain at the middle of Gale Crater. But because of the richness of their recent finds, Grotzinger said it may be some months before they begin their trek to Mount Sharp.

The drilling, expected to start this month, will dig five holes about two inches (five centimeters) into bedrock the size of a throw rug and then feed the powder created to the rover's two chemistry labs for analysis.

The drill is the most complex device on the rover and is the last instrument to be used. Project manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that operating it posed the biggest mechanical challenge since Curiosity's high-drama landing. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

A Watery Past?

That now desiccated Mars once had a significant amount of surface water is now generally accepted, but every new discovery of when and where water was present is considered highly significant. The presence of surface water in its many possible forms—as a running stream, as a still lake, as ground water soaked into the Martian soil—all add to an increased possibility that the planet was once habitable. (Watch a video about searching for life on Mars.)

And each piece of evidence supporting the presence of water brings the Curiosity mission closer to its formal goal—which is to determine whether Mars was once capable of supporting life.

Curiosity scientists have already concluded that a briskly moving river or stream once flowed near the Gale landing site.

The discovery of the mineral-filled veins within Yellowknife Bay rock fractures adds to the picture because those minerals can be deposited only in watery, underground conditions.

The Curiosity team has also examined Yellowknife Bay for sedimentary rocks with the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Scientists have found sandstone with grains up to about the size of a peppercorn, including one shaped like a flower bud that appears to gleam. Other nearby rocks are siltstone, with grains finer than powdered sugar. These are quite different from the pebbles and conglomerate rocks found in the landing area, but all these rocks are evidence of a watery past. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

One of the primary reasons Curiosity scientists selected Gale Crater as a landing site was because satellite images indicated that water-formed minerals were present near the base of Mount Sharp. Grotzinger said that the minerals' presence so close to the landing site, and some five miles from the mountain, is both a surprise and an opportunity.

The current site in Yellowknife Bay is so promising, Grotzinger said, that he would have been "thrilled" to find similar formations at the mission's prime destination at the base of Mount Sharp. Now the mission can look forward to the surprises to come at the mountain base while already having struck gold.

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Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence

Flanked by four children from across the country, President Obama today unveiled a sweeping plan to curb gun violence in America through an extensive package of legislation and executive actions not seen since the 1960s.

Obama is asking Congress to implement mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales; reinstate a ban on some assault-style weapons; ban high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds; and crackdown on illicit weapons trafficking.

The president's proposal also includes new initiatives for school safety, including a call for more federal aid to states for hiring so-called school resource officers (police), counselors and psychologists, and improved access to mental health care.

Obama also signed 23 executive actions on gun violence, policy directives not needing congressional approval. Among them is a directive to federal agencies to beef up the national criminal background-check system and a memorandum lifting a freeze on gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality," Obama said at a midday news conference. "If there's even one thing that we can do to reduce this violence, if there's even one life that can be saved, then we have an obligation to try.

Maqndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Congressman, survivor of Tucson shooting, says Gabby Giffords will personally lobby members of Congress on gun legislation Watch Video

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"And I'm going to do my part."

The announcement comes one month after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 26 dead, including 20 children. Obama called it the worst moment of his presidency and promised "meaningful action" in response.

The proposals were the work of an Obama-appointed task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that held 22 meetings on gun violence in the past three weeks. The group received input from more than 220 organizations and dozens of elected officials, a senior administration official said.

As part of the push, Obama nominated a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which leads enforcement of federal gun laws and has been without a confirmed director for six years. The president appointed acting director Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, to the post, if the Senate confirms him.

The administration's plan also calls for aid to states for the hiring of more school resource officers, counselors and psychologists. Obama also directed the Department of Education to ensure all schools have improved emergency-response plans.

He also called on Congress to make it illegal to possess or transfer armor-piercing bullets; it's now only illegal to produce them.

Officials said some of the legislative measures Obama outlined could be introduced on Capitol Hill next week.

"House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations," a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama's announcement. "And if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."

The proposals are already being met with stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, led by the National Rifle Association, which overnight released a scathing ad attacking the president as an "elitist hypocrite."

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

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Record-breaking temperatures are now the norm

Interactive map: "Your warming world"

Call it the new normal. Last year was the ninth warmest on record across the globe, according to NASA's annual analysis of surface temperatures. But by recent standards, it was nothing special: all but one of the hottest 10 years have happened since 2000.

The single exception – 1998 – was influenced by a very strong El Niño, in which warm water from the western Pacific spreads to the east, increasing the transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere.

The global average figures from the annual analysis of surface temperatures, released today by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, tell only part of the story. Local and regional changes can be even more extreme.

To visualise how temperature has changed around the globe, take a peek at New Scientist's interactive map of the entire historical temperature record from the NASA analysis. Watch the video to get started.

Continental record

Although 2012 was not a record breaker in global terms, it was an extreme year for the Arctic and North America, with temperatures exceeding 3 °C above the average for NASA's baseline period of 1951 to 1980.

Last week, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the continental US.

NASA's analysis confirms this conclusion. According to team leader James Hansen, an unusually warm spring dried out the soil across much of the country, leaving little moisture to moderate summer temperatures through evaporative cooling.

Still, the steady rise in global average temperature seems to have levelled off in the past few years. One reason may be that the El Niño conditions that prevailed in the first half of the decade gave way to La Niña, which reduces heat transfer from the oceans. If so, prepare for more record-breaking years when El Niño returns.

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Football: LionsXII fall to PKNS

SINGAPORE - After two confidence-boosting wins from their first two Malaysian Super League matches, V. Sundramoorthy's high-flying LionsXII side were brought down to earth on Tuesday night at the Shah Alam Stadium when they fell to their first defeat.

Ironically, PKNS Selangor, the team that defeated them on Tuesday, had entered the match in contrasting fashion - with two losses out of two matches.

But that did not stop PKNS Selangor from stunning the LionsXII and maintaining their 100 per cent home record against the Singapore side.

Last season, PKNS did the double over Sundram's men, beating them in Kuala Lumpur in the MSL as well as in the group stage of the Malaysia Cup.

Tuesday's match seemed headed for a 0-0 draw despite the LionsXII coming close through Fazrul Nawaz, Irwan Shah and Gabriel Quak in the first half which they had also dominated.

Fazrul sent his shot centimetres wide of the post after latching onto a pass by skipper Shahril Ishak. Irwan then missed another scoring opportunity during a goalmouth scramble minutes later, while Quak let himself down by shooting wide with only the keeper to beat after dribbling his way past several PKNS defenders.

In the second half, the two sides switched roles as PKNS attacked more, and had the LionsXII on the backfoot.

In the end, it was Nazrin Syamsul who made the difference when he blasted home the only goal of the game for PKNS.

The LionsXII's misery was further compounded when striker Fazrul was sent off in the dying minutes of the game for a nasty tackle.

The LionsXII's next match is on Saturday against Terengganu at the Jalan Besar Stadium.

- TODAY

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Jack Ma to step down as Alibaba CEO, stay on as chairman

Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

(Credit:
Alibaba Group)

Alibaba founder Jack Ma has announced that he will step down from his company's chief executive post.

Ma sent an e-mail to employees today, saying that it was a "difficult decision," according to Reuters, which obtained a copy of the note. He noted that while he will be stepping down as CEO, he will stay on at Alibaba as chairman of the company's board of directors.

Ma and Alibaba have yet to name a successor, though Ma said that his replacement would be announced on May 10. It seems likely, given the tone of the 48-year-old Ma's letter, that the replacement will be younger.

"It's not because I wanted to take things easy (though the job of Alibaba CEO is no easy task), it's because I see that Alibaba's young people have better, more brilliant, dreams than mine, and they are more capable of building a future that belongs to them," Ma wrote to employees, according to Reuters.

Alibaba founded his online marketplace and e-commerce company in 1999. Since then, the company has become one of the largest Internet firms in the world, with over 25,000 employees. Alibaba operates primarily in China.

That Ma is ready to step down now comes as a surprise. At 48 years of age, he's young for a chief executive. However, in an interview with The New York Times, Ma said that he's "no longer young enough to run such a fast-growing business."

Still, he doesn't plan on going far. He told the Times that he plans on being "very active" in the chairman role.

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