Benedict Departs Vatican for the Last Time as Pope

Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.

Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby heliport.

In a tweet sent from Benedict XVI ?@Pontifex as his motorcade rolled to the heliport, Benedict said, "Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

With church bells ringing across Rome, he then embarked on the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence just south of the city and his home for the coming months when he'll be recognized by the church as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus.

When Benedict landed in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries, including the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and back into a car, Benedict headed to the palace.

In the plaza at Castel Gandolfo, a crowd of supporters, many waving flags or banners, some peering out of windows, gathered to welcome Benedict. When Benedict finally appeared on the balcony, the crowd erupted in applause.

"Thank you for your friendship, your affection," Benedict told them.

Benedict said he was "just a pilgrim starting the last lap of his earthly journey."

After his brief address to the crowd, Benedict waved one last time and walked back into the palace as the sun set around the square.

9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI

In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.

Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

Read More..

Live hologram reveals moving people trapped in a fire

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

Firefighters can see through smoke thanks to thermal imaging helmets
but now, for the first time, they can also make out moving people trapped behind flames.

Created by Pietro Ferraro and colleagues from the National Institute of Optics in Pozzuoli, Italy, the system produces a live holographic movie that reconstructs motion hidden by a fire. In this video, you can see how an infrared camera fails to capture a person blocked by flames because it relies on a lens to produce an image. The holographic view, shown on the right, reproduces the obscured action by shining infrared laser light at it. The technique records information carried by rays reflected by objects or people, which is then decoded in real time to produce the live movie.

The team plans to make a device that houses both the laser and the holographic camera, allowing the system to be fixed inside buildings or tunnels. In addition to its use in fire search and rescue, the technique could also have biomedical applications, for example to monitor breathing or heartbeat.

If you enjoyed this video, see how a plane-mounted camera can detect volcanic ash or check out a holographic video of Princess Leia.

Read More..

New Singapore ambassadors to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland

SINGAPORE: The government has appointed Mr Wong Kwok Pun as Singapore's first resident Ambassador to the State of Qatar, Mr Lawrence Anderson as Singapore's next Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Mr Tee Tua Ba as Singapore's Ambassador to Switzerland (resident in Singapore).

Mr Wong and Mr Anderson will assume their post on 17 March 2013 and 30 March 2013 respectively.

Mr Wong joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1975. His most recent appointment was as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (August 2009 to February 2013), with concurrent accreditation to the Kingdom of Bahrain (January 2010 to February 2013).

Mr Anderson joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1984. His most recent appointment was as Director/Special Duties in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and concurrently as Diplomat-in-Residence at the Civil Service College (February 2011 to February 2013).

Mr Tee was Singapore's Non-Resident Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from April 2008 to December 2012.

- CNA/de

Read More..

Sorry, LTE compatibility in the U.S. still years away

Unfortunately, AT&T's iPhone 5 is only LTE at AT&T.

(Credit:
CNET)

BARCELONA, Spain--Here's the good news: the U.S. wireless industry is working to ensure that you'll eventually be able to take your LTE-enabled phone from one carrier to another and get the same experience.

The bad news: it likely won't happen for a few years.

That's according to T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray, who spoke to CNET in an interview at Mobile World Congress. Ray says the industry is keen on phones that can operate on different carriers, but that there remain a lot of complexities.

The advent of 4G LTE technology was supposed to unify the industry, joining together factions that spent years in their respective technology camps, or CDMA and GSM. That's been a big hurdle, particularly large countries such as the U.S. and China. In the U.S., for instance, phones can move between AT&T and T-Mobile USA, but will not work on Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel.

But alongside the rise of a common technology in LTE is a new problem: spectrum fragmentation. Because of the lack of consistent spectrum bands, each carrier has built their networks using incompatible spectrum frequencies. AT&T and Verizon actually run on the same frequency, 700 megahertz, but are in different parts of the band and can't work with each other. T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel are each using their own different bands.

The industry is already doing a lot of work to address the complications. Qualcomm told CNET that it will solve the 4G LTE roaming problem this year by introducing a chipset that can run on multiple frequencies. CNET broke the story that Verizon would have international roaming partners for its 4G LTE network by next year.

So while there's been progress on the chip side, there remains a problem with the radios and how many bands they can actually handle, Ray said. He added there were additional complications handling both low and high bands of frequency.

Another wrinkle: additional spectrum that will eventually be made available to the wireless industry that adds even more new frequencies. That comes on top of different bands of spectrum held by AT&T and Dish. So achieving interoperability is like hitting a moving target.

Verizon has said that while it may have some agreements in place next year, it will take some time for phones which are compatible with certain frequencies to hit the market.

There seems to be more of a push for the carriers to work with international carriers than their domestic competitors. The carriers, of course, have a vested interest in keeping the customer locked into their networks, so the idea of interoperability may not be high on the list.

The legacy of network incompatibility, meanwhile, means these devices couldn't work together either way if a 4G LTE connection wasn't available.

Ray, who also serves as chairman of 4G Americas trade group, said he is a big believer of consumer portability. Indeed, T-Mobile has pushed to get AT&T iPhones switched over to its carrier. But in many markets, those iPhones drop from a faster connection to a slower one because of spectrum incompatibility. Only in select markets do T-Mobile and AT&T have compatible bands for HSPA+, a fast network they both call 4G. But an
iPhone 5 on AT&T wouldn't get LTE with T-Mobile.

How quickly this gets addressed depends a lot on how rapidly the industry puts the new bands of spectrum to use. Ray said he believes this is an important issue.

"Ultimately, that problem has to be fixed," he said.

Read More..

A History of Balloon Crashes

A hot-air balloon exploded in Egypt yesterday as it carried 19 people over ancient ruins near Luxor. The cause is believed to be a torn gas hose. In Egypt as in many other countries, balloon rides are a popular way to sightsee. (Read about unmanned flight in National Geographic magazine.)

The sport of hot-air ballooning dates to 1783, when a French balloon took to the skies with a sheep, a rooster, and a duck. Apparently, they landed safely. But throughout the history of the sport, there have been tragedies like the one in Egypt. (See pictures of personal-flight technology.)

1785: Pioneering balloonist Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and pilot Pierre Romain died when their balloon caught fire, possibly from a stray spark, and crashed during an attempt to cross the English Channel. They were the first to die in a balloon crash.

1923: Five balloonists participating in the Gordon Bennett Cup, a multi-day race that dates to 1906, were killed when lightning struck their balloons.

1924: Meteorologist C. LeRoy Meisinger and U.S. Army balloonist James T. Neely died after a lightning strike. They had set off from Scott Field in Illinois during a storm to study air pressure. Popular Mechanics dubbed them "martyrs of science."

1995: Tragedy strikes the Gordon Bennett Cup again. Belarusian forces shot down one of three balloons that drifted into their airspace from Poland. The two Americans on board died. The other balloonists were detained and fined for entering Belarus without a visa. (Read about modern explorers who take to the skies.)

1989: Two hot air balloons collided during a sightseeing trip near Alice Springs, Australia. One balloon crashed to the ground killing all 13 people on board. The pilot of the other balloon was sentenced to a two-year prison term for "committing a dangerous act." Until today, this was considered the most deadly balloon accident.

2012: A balloon hit a power line and caught fire in New Zealand, killing all 11 on board. Investigators later determined that the pilot was not licensed to fly and had not taken  proper safety measures during the crash, like triggering the balloon's parachute and deflation system.

2012: A sightseeing balloon carrying 32 people crashed and caught fire during a thunderstorm in the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia. Six died; many other passengers were injured.

Read More..

Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions.

"There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."

With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among a small chorus of conservatives saying bring on the cuts.

Read more: Bernanke on Sequester Cuts: Too Much, Too Soon

Lucas cited duplicative equipment purchases, military-run golf courses and lavish food on larger bases -- unlike the chow he endured at a combat operations post in Afghanistan with about 120 other soldiers.

"These guys would have very good food, and I'm talking almost like a buffet style, shrimp and steak once a week, ice cream, all this stuff," Lucas said. "They had Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and McDonald's. And I said to myself, 'Do we really need this?'"

Lucas and AFP would like to see the sequester modified, with federal agencies granted more authority to target the cuts and avoid the more dire consequences. But the group wants the cuts to happen.

"We're very supportive of the sequestration cuts but would prefer to see more targeted cuts at the same level," said the group's spokesman, Levi Russell.

As President Obama and his Cabinet members are sounding the sequester alarm bells, AFP's willingness shows that not everyone is running for the hills.

Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo

Speaker Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass' Watch Video

Sequester Showdown: Automatic Spending Cuts Loom Watch Video

President Obama Details Consequences of Sequester Cuts Watch Video

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

Obama traveled to Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday to speak at a shipyard about cuts and layoffs to defense contractors. In his most recent weekly radio address, he told Americans that the Navy has already kept an aircraft carrier home instead of deploying it to the Persian Gulf. And last week, he spoke before national TV cameras at the White House, warning that first responders would be laid off.

Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano has warned that the sequester will "leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks." Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned that air travel will back up after the Federal Aviation Administration furloughs air traffic controllers. And the heads of 18 other federal agencies told Congress that terrible things will happen unless the sequester is pushed off.

Some Republicans have accused the president of scaremongering to gin up popular support for tax hikes. Obama has warned of calamity and demanded compromise in the next breath, and a few Republicans have rejected this as a false choice.

Read more: Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass'

"I don't think the president's focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "For 16 months, the president's been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill."

After Obama spoke to governors at the this week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Jonathan Karl outside the White House that the president is exaggerating the sequester's consequences.

"He's trying to scare the American people," Jindal said. "He's trying to distort the impact."

Read More..

Curiosity's spills add thrills to the Mars life hunts

* Required fields

* First name

* Last name

* Country

* Email address

* Password
Password must contain only letters and numbers, and be at least 8 characters

* Confirm password

Read More..

JPMorgan to slash 19,000 jobs by end-2014

NEW YORK: US banking giant JPMorgan Chase plans to axe up to 19,000 jobs by the end of 2014 as it seeks to rein in costs, the company said Tuesday in an investor presentation.

JPMorgan Chase intends the majority of the cuts -- between 13,000 to 15,000 -- in the mortgage banking division, where the company spent $9.1 billion in 2012.

Another 3,000 to 4,000 jobs will be eliminated in the non-mortgage areas of its consumer and community banking division.

JPMorgan Chase estimated its full-year expenses will drop by $3 billion in 2014 from the 2012 level as the company seeks corporate and investment bank cost synergies, according to the presentation.

JPMorgan shares were down 0.5 percent in morning trade amid an overall rising market.

The Wall Street bank reported earnings of $21.3 billion in 2012, up from $19 billion a year earlier, but revenue that slightly missed market expectations.

The jump in profits came despite an embarrassing $6.2 billion trading loss stemming from a London trader nicknamed the London "whale."

The trading losses led to several resignations and reassignments and resulted in a lower 2012 take-home pay for JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Plug in a BeeWi Mobot to control your gadgets while you're out

BARCELONA, Spain--Time for a new meaning to 'plug and play': the BeeWi Mobot is a power plug that not only controls the gadgets in your home, but also tells you what's going on while you're out, thanks to a SIM card and an iPhone app.

The Mobot is a prototype shown off by BeeWi at mobile phone show Mobile World Congress. Plug it into a power socket, then plug an electrical appliance or gadget into the Mobot, and it will control that gadget. What makes it more than just a regular timer plug is that all the Mobot plugs in the house can talk to each other, and to your phone. Originally, they used ZigBee, but the finished version is set to use Bluetooth instead.

The master Mobot has a SIM card in it, which then connects to the other SIM-less Mobots via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. You can then turn each individual plug on and off from wherever you are with an iOS app. The app also lets you schedule your lamps, your washing machine or whatever is plugged in to turn on or off automatically at set times.

The Mobot can also let you know what's going on in the house. It has a motion detector and can text you when it detects someone moving around, whether it's warning you of an uninvited wrong'un or letting you know your kids are home safe. And you can set the plugs to turn on the lights or fire up your computer when you walk in the room.

The plugs also have a temperature sensor to warn of fire, and have a battery inside so even when the power goes out, the Mobot has enough juice to warn you that it's time to come home and rescue the contents of the freezer.

The BeeWi Mobot is planned to arrive in the second or third quarter of this year. At present, it's planned to cost a rather steep 149 Euros for the master Mobot and a further 59 Euros for each peripheral plug -- it's only when you consider this product is largely aimed at people with second homes that the price is put in perspective.

For more on the latest phones,
tablets and just about anything with a SIM card in it -- including a GPS walking cane and an
Android-powered coffee machine -- check out our news, previews and videos from Mobile World Congress.

Read More..

Sharks Warn Off Predators By Wielding Light Sabers

Diminutive deep-sea sharks illuminate spines on their backs like light sabers to warn potential predators that they could get a sharp mouthful, a new study suggests.

Paradoxically, the sharks seem to produce light both to hide and to be conspicuous—a first in the world of glowing sharks. (See photos of other sea creatures that glow.)

"Three years ago we showed that velvet belly lanternsharks [(Etmopterus spinax)] are using counter-illumination," said lead study author Julien Claes, a biologist from Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain, by email.

In counter-illumination, the lanternsharks, like many deep-sea animals, light up their undersides in order to disguise their silhouette when seen from below. Brighter bellies blend in with the light filtering down from the surface. (Related: "Glowing Pygmy Shark Lights Up to Fade Away.")

Fishing the 2-foot-long (60-centimeter-long) lanternsharks up from Norwegian fjords and placing them in darkened aquarium tanks, the researchers noticed that not only do the sharks' bellies glow, but they also had glowing regions on their backs.

The sharks have two rows of light-emitting cells, called photophores, on either side of a fearsome spine on the front edges of their two dorsal fins.

Study co-author Jérôme Mallefet explained how handling the sharks and encountering their aggressive behavior hinted at the role these radiant spines play.

"Sometimes they flip around and try to hit you with their spines," said Mallefet, also from Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain. "So we thought maybe they are showing their weapon in the dark depths."

To investigate this idea, the authors analyzed the structure of the lanternshark spines and found that they were more translucent than other shark spines.

This allowed the spines to transmit around 10 percent of the light from the glowing photophores, the study said.

For Predators' Eyes Only

Based on the eyesight of various deep-sea animals, the researchers estimated that the sharks' glowing spines were visible from several meters away to predators that include harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), and blackmouth catsharks (Galeus melastomus).

"The spine-associated bioluminescence has all the characteristics to play the right role as a warning sign," said Mallefet.

"It's a magnificent way to say 'hello, here I am, but beware I have spines,'" he added.

But these luminous warning signals wouldn't impede the sharks' pursuit of their favorite prey, Mueller's bristle-mouth fish (Maurolicus muelleri), the study suggested. These fish have poorer vision than the sharks' predators and may only spot the sharks' dorsal illuminations at much closer range.

For now, it remains a mystery how the sharks create and control the lights on their backs. The glowing dorsal fins could respond to the same hormones that control the belly lights, suggested Mallefet, but other factors may also be involved.

"MacGyver" of Bioluminescence

Several other species use bioluminescence as a warning signal, including marine snails (Hinea brasiliana), glowworms (Lampyris noctiluca) and millipedes (Motyxia spp.).

Edith Widder, a marinebiologist from the Ocean Research and Conservation Association who was not involved in the current study, previously discovered a jellyfish whose bioluminescence rubs off on attackers that get too close.

"It's like paint packages in money bags at banks," she explained.

"Any animal that was foolish enough to go after it," she added "gets smeared all over with glowing particles that make it easy prey for its predators."

Widder also points out that glowing deep-sea animals often put their abilities to diverse uses. (Watch: "Why Deep-Sea Creatures Glow.")

"There are many examples of animals using bioluminescence for a whole range of different functions," she said.

Mallefet agrees, joking that these sharks are the "MacGyver of bioluminescence."

"Just give light to this shark species and it will use it in any possible way."

And while Widder doesn't discount the warning signal theory, "another possibility would be that it could be to attract a mate."

Lead author Julien Claes added by email, "I also discovered during my PhD thesis that velvet belly lanternsharks have glowing organs on their sexual parts."

And that, he admits, "makes it very easy, even for a human, to distinguish male and female of this species in the dark!"

The glowing shark study appeared online in the February 21 edition of Scientific Reports.

Read More..