Why Astronauts Were Banned From Drinking Wine In Outer Space

The story behind NASA's brief embrace of extraterrestrial sherry is a curious one. In the early seventies, the agency's focus was shifting from short, Moon-focused missions to possibility of longer-term inhabitation of space. A revamped menu was among the most pressing challenges: food on the Gemini and Apollo programs came in dehydrated cube form, or squeezed from a pouch, and was universally regarded as inedible.

According to Ben Evan's book, At Home in Space: The Late Seventies into the Eighties, in May 1969, Don Arabian, NASA's spacecraft project manager, tried living on Apollo fare for three consecutive days, and subsequently reported that he had "lost the will to live" and that, in particular, "the sausage patties tasted like granulated rubber."

After a year of working on the food program for Skylab, the United States' first space station, Evans reports that "the situation had improved significantly: the station would include both a freezer and an oven and foods would be provided in five varieties—dehydrated, intermediate moisture, 'wet-packed,' frozen, and perishable."
Spaghetti, prime ribs, ice-cream, and—for a brief moment—alcohol were all on the menu.
The tough role of Space Sommelier fell to Charles Bourland, who spent more than three decades at NASA Johnson Space Center developing food and food packages for spaceflight.
Bourland shared his recipes and reminiscences in The Astronaut's Cookbook:My boss was Mormon and consequently, the job of heading the wine selection process for the Skylab missions fell to me. Selecting a wine was an interesting project for the people in the food laboratory, and we had no shortage of volunteers for the taste panel. After consulting with several professors at the University of California at Davis, it was decided that a Sherry would work best because any wine flown would have to be repackaged. Sherry is a very stable product, having been heated during the processing. Thus, it would be the least likely to undergo changes if it were to be repackaged. The winner of the space Sherry taste test was Paul Masson California Rare Cream Sherry. A quantity of this Rare Cream Sherry was ordered for the entire Skylab mission and was delivered to the Johnson Space Center. A package was developed that consisted of a flexible plastic pouch with a built-in drinking tube, which could be cut off. The astronaut would simply squeeze the bag and drink the wine from the package. The flexible container was designed to be fitted into the Skylab pudding can.
An article in The Milwaukee Journal, dated August 1, 1972, gleefully reported the news that "the era of prohibition is about to end in space."
Dr. Malcolm Smith, a nutritionist on Bourland's team, explained that the wine chosen was American, that astronauts were rationed to just four ounces every four days, and that "the question of whether wine promoted better health was still open." He continued: "I would tend to believe that there is some value besides pure energy, either in the calming effect or promoting digestion. Somewhere in there, there's probably a beneficial effect from wine."
Yet the sherry never went to space.
First of all, early tests in NASA's low-gravity, "Vomit Comet" plane, designed to see whether the packaging worked in weightless conditions, produced unfortunate results, as Bourland recalled in his official oral history:
As it turned out, the odors released by the wine, combined with the residual smell of years-worth of people getting sick on the plane, had an unplanned effect on the crew. Many grabbed for their barf bags.
In response, NASA surveyed the crew as to whether they wanted the sherry on board, and "it was about half and half. They didn’t really care."
The final nail in the drinks cabinet coffin came when Skylab 4 commander, Gerry Carr, mentioned the presence of alcohol on the menu in a public lecture, and NASA received a flurry of angry letters from the general public. As the Milwaukee Journal article reports, the team had anticipated that the sherry plan might not go over well:"Let’s just say that no one here is enthused about publicizing this thing any more than necessary,” said scientist-astronaut Edward G. Gibson, who will fly on the third Skylab mission. “The problem is that you have got some extremists around and we (astronauts) kind of represent a form of purity. As soon as you taint that purity with alcohol, they really get upset,” Gibson said.
Gibson's comments were prescient. The official end of NASA's alcohol program came just ten days later, in a memorandum from Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, Skylab's manager in Houston, to Chris Kraft, director of the Johnson Space Center:"In accord with our discussion on Tuesday, August 8, 1972, I have reconsidered the requirement for a fruit beverage (wine) in the Skylab menu and have concluded that there is no basic requirement for such a beverage.   
The good news is that the sherry did not go to waste. At the time the fateful decision was being made, a crew of astronauts were preparing to spend fifty-six days in a vacuum chamber, simulating a Skylab stay as closely as possible.
The experiment was called SMEAT (Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test), and in Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story, astronauts Owen Garriott and Joe Kerwin, writing with co-author David Hitt, describe the role that sherry played in it:
Of course, not all countries share the United States' prohibitionist tendencies. Russia, has its own, differently dysfunctional relationship to alcohol, which, as Mir space station resident Alexander Lazutkin explained to NBC, means that cognac is prescribed to cosmonauts on extended missions in order "to stimulate our immune system and on the whole to keep our organisms in tone."
As it turns out, there is some scientific evidence for the benefits of alcohol in space. A 2011 paper published in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology concluded that reservatrol, a phenolic compound found in red wine, "could be envisaged as a nutritional countermeasure for spaceflight," following an experiment that hung rats upside down to simulate the bone density loss that accompanies zero-gravity living.
Sadly, both cognac and sherry are made from white wine grapes, and contain very little reservatrol. But with longer term missions to Mars on the horizon, as well as Virgin Galactic-style space joyrides, perhaps it's time for a new crew of Space Sommeliers to step up.
If you're intrigued by the potential of future space cocktails, and you're in London this Sunday, don't miss "A Brief History of Drinking in Space" featuring Sam Bompas of Bompas & Parr and David Lane of The Gourmand, previously mentioned on Gizmodo.
The event will explore the forgotten cultural history of offworld alcohol:To date, there has been relatively little consumption of alcohol in space and on the moon, but that could be set to change. With space tourism taking off, new lunar missions on the horizon and manned expeditions aiming further into space – with all its stresses – could a new era of zero gravity libations be next? From Buzz Aldrin's legendary Holy Communion on the moon to sherry experiments aboard Skylab and ceremonial "vodka" consumption aboard the ISS, we'll discuss the secret history of a slightly tipsy space age and ask what role our favourite poison will play in the future colonisation of the moon.
Better still, the £5 ticket price includes the chance to sample Bompas & Parr's Parabolic Sherry, a limited edition, plastic-pouched tipple based on the Skylab-era research about alcohol in space. If you manage to get to the event on Sunday, please report back with tasting notes!

Reports: NSA uses smartphone apps like Angry Birds to track targets

London- Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest that spy agencies have a powerful ally in Angry Birds and a host of other apps installed on smartphones across the globe.
The documents, published Monday by the New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica, suggest that the mapping, gaming, and social networking apps which are a common feature of the world's estimated one billion smartphones can feed America's National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ with huge amounts of personal data, including location information and details such as political affiliation or sexual orientation.
The size and scope of the program aren't publicly known, but the reports suggest that U.S. and British intelligence easily get routine access to data generated by apps such as the Angry Birds game franchise or the Google Maps navigation service.
The joint spying program "effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system," one 2008 document from the British eavesdropping agency is quoted as saying. Another document — a hand-drawn picture of a smirking fairy conjuring up a tottering pile of papers over a table marked "LEAVE TRAFFIC HERE" — suggests that gathering the data doesn't take much effort.
The NSA did not directly comment on the reports but said in a statement Monday that the communications of those who were not "valid foreign intelligence targets" were not of interest to the spy agency.
"Any implication that NSA's foreign intelligence collection is focused on the smartphone or social media communications of everyday Americans is not true," the statement said. "We collect only those communications that we are authorized by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes — regardless of the technical means used by the targets."
GCHQ said it did not comment on intelligence matters, but insisted that all of its activity was "authorized, necessary and proportionate."
Intelligence agencies' interest in mobile phones and the networks they run on has been documented in several of Snowden's previous disclosures, but the focus on apps shows how everyday, innocuous-looking pieces of software can be turned into instruments of espionage.
Angry Birds, an addictive birds-versus-pigs game which has been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times worldwide, was one of the most eye-catching examples. The Times and ProPublica said a 2012 British intelligence report laid out how to extract Angry Bird users' information from phones running the Android operating system.
Another document, a 14-page-long NSA slideshow published to the Web, listed a host of other mobile apps, including those made by social networking giant Facebook, photo sharing site Flickr, and the film-oriented Flixster.
It wasn't clear precisely what information can be extracted from which apps, but one of the slides gave the example of a user who uploaded a photo using a social media app. Under the words, "Golden Nugget!" it said that the data generated by the app could be examined to determine a phone's settings, where it connected to, which websites it had visited, which documents it had downloaded, and who its users' friends were. One of the documents said that apps could even be mined for information about users' political alignment or sexual orientation.
Google Inc. and Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the maker of Angry Birds, did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the reports.
The Times' web posting Monday of a censored U.S. document on the smartphone surveillance briefly contained material that appeared to publish the name of an NSA employee. Computer experts said they were able to extract the name of the employee, along with the name of a Middle Eastern terror group the program was targeting and details about the types of computer files the NSA found useful.
Since Snowden began leaking documents in June, his supporters have maintained they have been careful not to disclose any intelligence official's name or operational details that could compromise ongoing surveillance.
The employee did not return phone or email messages from The AP.
Michael Birmingham, a spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, said the agency requested the Times redact the information. Danielle Rhodes Ha, a Times spokeswoman, attributed the posting to a production error and said the material had been removed.

Anyone for head tennis? Google previews first games for Glass

It's been a busy week for Google Glass. On Monday the company announced that the smart headset can now be worn with specially designed prescription frames and now Google is trying to highlight Glass's capabilities as a gaming device.
Although a number of popular apps such as Evernote have made the jump from smartphone to smart headset, Google Glass is so far lacking in gaming apps.
Google hopes to change that by showing developers how the headset's array of sensors can be used to bring new elements of emersion and interactivity to gaming, whether though voice commands, head tilts or hand movements. As Google says in a post on its developers' site: "We hope our experiments inspire you to take a closer look at the Glass platform and build awesome Glassware."
In all, there are five mini games that will give Glass-wearers and games designers some sense of the possibilities. They include:
Tennis
How long can the player maintain a rally simply by using head movements to mimic racket movements and swings?

Balance
This game turns the stereotype of attending a European finishing school for young women into a virtual reality. To play, the wearer needs to keep an imaginary pile of books perfectly balanced on his or her head.

Shape Splitter
A game that will seem familiar to anyone who's played Fruit Ninja. The idea is to swing or "slice" your hands in order to cut shapes that appear on the device's screen in half.

Barack Obama urges 'year of action' in state of union speech

President Barack Obama is vowing to bypass a divided Congress and take action on his own to bolster America's middle class in a state of the union speech he used to try to breathe new life into his second term after a troubled year.
Standing in the House of Representatives chamber before legislators, Supreme Court justices and VIP guests, Obama declared his independence from Congress by issuing a raft of executive orders — a move likely to inflame already tense relations between the Democratic president and Republicans.
Obama's actions, while relatively modest, collectively amounted to an expression of frustration at the pace of legislative action with Republicans who control the House of Representatives and are able to slow the president's agenda.
The president says he plans to issue an executive order in the coming weeks requiring federal contractors to pay their federally funded employees at least $10.10 an hour, and urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to the same amount.
"Say yes. Give America a raise."
He also announced the creation of a "starter savings account" to help millions of people save for retirement.
"I'm eager to work with all of you," Obama said. "But America does not stand still — and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do."
Obama touted the work of Republicans and Democrats is producing a budget last month that "undoes some of last year's severe cuts to priorities like education," saying the budget compromise should leave the government freer to focus on creating new jobs.
"In the coming months, let's see where else we can make progress together. Let's make this a year of action. That's what most Americans want — for all of us in this chamber to focus on their lives, their hopes, their aspirations. And what I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all — the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead," he said.
"Let's face it: that belief has suffered some serious blows. Over more than three decades, even before the great recession hit, massive shifts in technology and global competition had eliminated a lot of good, middle-class jobs, and weakened the economic foundations that families depend on."
A central theme of the address, Obama's sixth such annual speech in the House chamber, is addressing income inequality, as middle-class Americans struggle to get ahead even while wealthier people prosper in the uneven economic recovery.
'Let's get immigration reform done'
Obama's strategy means he has scaled back ambitions for large legislative actions and wants to focus more on small-bore initiatives that can reduce income inequality and create more opportunities for middle class workers.
Obama defended his controversial health-care law, whose troubled roll-out last October rocked his presidency and sent his job approval ratings tumbling to around 40 per cent.
"I don't expect to convince my Republican friends on the merits of this law," Obama said. "But I know that the American people aren't interested in refighting old battles."
On one of his biggest priorities, immigration reform, Obama urged Congress to work together on an overhaul, but he held his fire on the issue, with signs of possible progress developing in recent days among House Republicans.
"Let's get immigration reform done this year," he said.
Obama also pledged to continue to work to reduce violence in the United States despite a lack of support in Congress for gun control measures he failed to get passed last year.
"I have seen the courage of parents, students, pastors, and police officers all over this country who say, 'We are not
afraid,' and I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theatres, shopping malls, or schools," Obama said, according to the text of his state of the union address.
Both immigration and gun control were reforms on Obama's to- do list last year that stalled in Congress.
He also told lawmakers he will veto any efforts to increase sanctions on Iran while the United States and other Western powers were in diplomatic talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.
"The sanctions that we put in place helped make this opportunity possible," Obama said, according to the text of his address, referring to diplomatic talks.
"But let me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it. For the sake of our national security, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed."
Closing Guantanamo Bay
In his speech, Obama said this needs to be the year the prison at Guantanamo Bay is closed.
"Because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action, but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals, and setting an example for the rest of the world," he said.

Obama said the U.S. government will "support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future," without making any specific promises around troop levels in the country.

"If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies to carry out two narrow missions: training and assisting Afghan forces, and counterterrorism operations to pursue any remnants of al-Qaeda," he said.
"For while our relationship with Afghanistan will change, one thing will not: our resolve that terrorists do not launch attacks against our country."

Madrid denies involvement in Neymar investigation

Real Madrid has issued a statement denying any involvement in the investigation into Neymar's transfer from Santos to Barcelona.
The Spanish High Court is continuing its probe surrounding the alleged misappropriation of funds  by the club's former president Sandro Rosell- who resigned last week- in securing the signing of the Brazil star.
His replacement, Josep Maria Bartomeu, has since revealed that Barcelona paid Neymar's parents 40 million euros of the total €57.1 million transfer fee.
This news was then followed by suggestions from a Catalan journalist, Xavi Bosch, that Madrid was responsible for sparking the investigation - claims fiercely denied by los Blancos.
A statement on the club's official website read: "Given the serious demonstrations last night by RAC 1 journalist Xavi Bosch, the president of Real Madrid Florentino Perez wants to state the following:
1. It is flatly a false assertion that aims to involve absurdly the president of Real Madrid with the judicial process initiated following the complaint filed by a member of FC Barcelona against president Sandro Rosell.
2. Real Madrid president demands that the journalist author of such misrepresentations rectify those claims in the same medium of communication clearly and immediately.
3. If this correction does not occur, the president of Real Madrid will file suit against journalist in defense of the right to honor, privacy and self-image. This has already been sent to the lawyers the content of the allegations made."
Barcelona board member Jordi Cases was the man responsible for initially raising concerns over the small print of Neymar's transfer and has refused to drop his complaint.

Wikipedia to add audio to preserve history

The crowd-sourced encyclopedia plans to add audio clips to its biography pages to preserve famous voices for future generations.
The project seeks to capture short clips, roughly 10 seconds, of notable people, whether famous historians, activists, scientists or celebrities, and add them, along with a text transcript, to their pages on the digital encyclopedia.
The first donator to the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project, or WikiVIP, is UK writer, actor, director and broadcaster Stephen Fry, and the result can be heard at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_fry.
And while members of the project are approaching more people, the project has already received a major boost thanks to a donation from the BBC.
It is allowing Wikipedia to extract 300 voice clips from certain programs. As a result, Tim Berners-Lee, Aung San Suu Kyi and 150 other notable individuals also have audio files attached to their profiles.
But of course Wikipedia, being Wikipedia, is also looking to its millions of users to lend a hand and would like people who may know feted individuals to approach them for a sound bite.

Google Addds Prescription Frames to Glass, its Computerized Glasses

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Google Glass is getting glasses.
Google is adding prescription frames and new styles of detachable sunglasses to its computerized, Internet-connected goggles known as Glass.
The move comes as Google Inc. prepares to make Glass available to the general population later this year. Currently, Glass is available only to the tens of thousands of people who are testing and creating apps for it.
Glass hasn't actually had glasses in its frame until now.
Glass is basically a small computer, with a camera and a display screen above the wearer's right eye. The device sits roughly at eyebrow level, higher than where eyeglasses would go.
It lets wearers surf the Web, ask for directions and take photos or videos. Akin to wearing a smartphone without having to hold it in your hands, Glass also lets people read their email, share photos on Twitter and Facebook, translate phrases while travelling or partake in video chats. Glass follows some basic voice commands, spoken after the worlds "OK, Glass."
The gadget itself is not changing with this announcement. Rather, Google plans to make various attachments available. Starting Tuesday, the Mountain View, Calif., company is offering four styles of prescription frames and two new types of shades available to its "explorers" — the people who are trying out Glass. The frames will cost $225 and the shades, $150. That's on top of the $1,500 price of Glass.
Users can take the frames to any vision care provider for prescription lenses, though Google says it is working with insurance provider Vision Service Plan to train eye-care providers around the U.S. on how to work with Glass. Google says some insurance plans may cover the cost of the frames.
Isabelle Olsson, the lead designer for Google Glass, says the new frames open the spectacles up to a larger audience.
She demonstrated the new frames to The Associated Press last week at the Google Glass Basecamp, an airy loft on the eighth floor of New York City's Chelsea Market. It's one of the places where Glass users go to pick up their wares and learn how to use them. Walking in, visitors are greeted, of course, by a receptionist wearing Google Glass.
"We want as many people as possible to wear it," she said.
To that end, Glass's designers picked four basic but distinct frame styles. On one end is a chunky "bold" style that stands out. On the other is a "thin" design — to blend in as much as possible.
Olsson said Google won't be able to compete with the thousands of styles offered at typical eyeglasses stores. Instead, Glass's designers looked at what types of glasses are most popular, what people wear the most and, importantly, what they look good in.
The latter has been a constant challenge for the nascent wearable technology industry, especially for something like Google Glass, designed to be worn on your face. When Google unveiled Glass in a video nearly two years ago, it drew unfavourable comparisons to Bluetooth headsets, the trademarks of the fashion-ignorant technophile.
In designing Google Glass, Olsson and her team focused on three design principles with the goal of creating something that people want to wear. These were lightness, simplicity and scalability. That last one means having different options available for different people — just as there are different styles of headphones, from in-ear buds to huge aviator-style monstrosities.
Google Glass currently comes in five colours — "charcoal," a lighter shade of grey called "shale," white, tangerine and bright blue "sky." The frame attachments out Tuesday are all titanium. Users can mix and match.
"People need to be able to choose," Olsson said. "These products need to be lifestyle products."

US Investigates Toyota Camry Hybrids After Getting Complaints About Power Brake Failures

DETROIT - U.S. safety regulators are investigating complaints that power-assisted brakes can fail at times in Camry gas-electric hybrids.
The probe covers about 30,000 of the midsize cars from the 2007 and 2008 model years.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has 59 complaints about intermittent loss of power-brake assist. The agency says the problem happens without warning. It causes increased stopping distances and requires more pedal pressure to stop the car.
Two crashes have been reported but no injuries. The agency says 24 incidents happened at speeds of 40 miles per hour or more. It says the number of complaints is increasing, with 55 per cent received in the past eight months.
Investigators will try to find the cause and determine if the cars should be recalled.
Toyota spokesman John Hanson said the company is co-operating with NHTSA.
One Camry owner complained to NHTSA in June that the dashboard brake warning lights came on and his brakes failed while approaching a pedestrian crossing. "I did a sharp evasive turn and hit the curb hard in an attempt not to run over pedestrians in the crossing!" the driver wrote. The dashboard lights then disappeared and brakes functioned normally, the owner wrote.
The car was taken to a dealer, who at first found no trouble codes in the Camry's computer. After further testing, the dealer said there was a problem with the brake control computer, the driver wrote. "Toyota is behaving immoral not recalling the faulty parts that in many cases cannot even be diagnosed," the driver wrote.

Captian 'Refused Chance' to Return to Sinking Concordia

An official coordinating the rescue from Italy's stricken cruise ship told a court Monday that the captain, accused of abandoning ship, refused twice to be taken back on board after making it safely to dry land.
Captain Francesco Schettino, who is on trial for multiple manslaughter, insists that he slipped off the Costa Concordia as it rolled over after hitting rocks off the island of Giglio, and fell onto a lifeboat which carried him ashore.
In a widely-quoted phone call a coast guard official is heard upbraiding Schettino and ordering him to "get back on board, for fuck's sake" -- an order the former captain refused point blank to follow.
"When I got to the rock where Schettino was, I told him I would take him back to Giglio port so he could get on a dinghy and be taken back to the Concordia, and get back on board if need be," Carlo Galli, the head of the traffic police coordinating the rescue, told the court.
Thirty-two people were killed in the nighttime disaster, which happened when passengers were sitting down to dinner.
Some drowned after throwing themselves into the icy sea, others were trapped in the lifts as the huge liner sank.
Helicopters desperately ferrying survivors to safety flew over Schettino as he sat huddled on an outcrop near the shore, Galli said.
"He told me he had to stay, to supervise his ship. When I repeated the invitation to take him back, another officer from the ship said it was a good idea to try and get back on board. Schettino said no again," he said.
Captain 'was dry' after leaving ship
Schettino has claimed he begged the lifeboat he found himself on to turn around and take him back to the ship, but his request was refused.
He has also said the ship's owner Costa Crociere, Europe's biggest cruise operator, told him by telephone not to return to the stricken liner.
"Schettino was dry, unlike the rest of the passengers with him. He asked to use my mobile phone, but I needed it to coordinate the rescue. We took the passengers to shore, he remained behind with one or two other officials," Galli said.
The Concordia hit rocks off the island of Giglio on the night of January 14, 2012, with 4,229 people from 70 countries on board.
Schettino has admitted to performing a risky "salute" manoeuvre near Giglio island and is accused of delaying the evacuation process after the impact.
The court heard from Andrea Bongiovanni, an official who says he tried to persuade Schettino to sound the alarm long before he eventually gave the order to do so.
"The ship's safety manager and I loudly insisted, along with the second in command Roberto Blosio, that the general alarm should be sounded. But captain Schettino gestured that we should wait, he didn't give the order," he said.
"We only managed to later," and once the extent of the damage to the ship became clear, "the captain looked me in the eyes and said: 'My career is over'," he added.
The trial, which began in July last year, is expected to last for months as hundreds of witnesses testify.

RCMP Drone Patrols P.E.I. Skies

RCMP have a new drone patrolling the skies of P.E.I. to get aerial perspectives on crashes and perhaps help with search and rescues.
The miniature helicopter caries a camera and operates by remote control. The unmanned aerial vehicle, as it's officially known, was custom-built for $18,000 for Saskatchewan RCMP. They gave it to Island police for free.
“The helicopter is carrying a Canon stock camera, like you'd buy at Future Shop or Staples. It's plugged into a live, encrypted, down link," RCMP spokesman Greg McCormick explained.
"It's a multi-rotor helicopter. There are six blades. It's made of carbon fibre.”
It fits in the back of a police cruiser and can be deployed in minutes. RCMP have just one regular helicopter to serve all of Atlantic Canada, so mini-copters could assist by taking aerial photos of highway accidents for crash analysts.
It may also help find missing people, RCMP said.
15-minute battery life
Sgt. Andrew Blackadar tested out the craft this week. "Actually it's a bit of fun. It's like a remote-controlled car, but a bit more sophisticated and it takes two of us to operate it," he said.
McCormick said it wouldn’t work for covert surveillance. “We don't use it for covert work. As you can tell, it's quite loud. It would certainly be a giveaway to its purpose,” he said as the drone buzzed overhead.
Its rechargeable battery only lasts for 15 minutes and it struggles in high winds.

Google Buys DeepMiind Artifical Intelligence Firm

Google says that it has purchased the British startup DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company founded by a 37-year old former chess prodigy and computer game designer.
The American tech giant's London office confirmed a deal had been made but refused to offer a purchase price, which is reportedly $500 million. The company was founded by researcher Demis Hassabis together with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.
Hassabis, who is on leave from University College London, has investigated the mechanisms that underlie human memory.
Artificial intelligence uses computers for tasks normally requiring human intelligence, like speech recognition or language translation. DeepMind says the company, based in London, specializes in algorithms and machine learning.
Google, like other tech giants such as Facebook, are anxious to develop systems that work like the human brain.

The Future of PIN could use Colour, Symbols to Boost Security

The PIN system is an ageing and not entirely secure technique, especially when it comes to ATMs. But a new system that uses color and shape may go at least some way to solving the problem.

With many ATM hacks recording PIN button presses using a small camera, TRI-PIN claims to have a solution that will foil such snooping tactics. Admittedly, it sounds a little like a child designed it, but hear it out. Here's how the idea works:A user chooses a PIN with a combination of numbers, colours and shapes;, for example: 3, square, pink, flag. Each time that the user has to input their pin, the colours and symbols randomly change position on the TRI-PIN keypad, so you're never pressing the same sequence of keys. 
That's easy to get working on touchscreen devices through software, perhaps a little harder to install as hardware on thousands of ATMs. Regardless, though, it's a pretty neat and simple solution to a complex and enduring problem. The system is about to start appearing in apps, and may at some point make it to hardware—though that might not be childsplay.

Genetic Clue to How Limbs Evolved

Fish have the genetic machinery necessary to make fingers, but it is not switched on, a study suggests.
The research in Plos Biology journal sheds light on how fish evolved into the earliest land animals millions of years ago.
For fish to make the transition to land, an existing DNA architecture had to be "hijacked" in order to make digits, the researchers said.
In order to do this, they took genes from fish and inserted them into mice.
It was already known that the genes for limbs are found in fish but how they evolved to form digits remained unclear.
To unravel the genetics, the authors used the zebrafish as a model. But other scientists said that zebrafish were not a useful species for studying limb evolution.
Lead author Joost Woltering from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, said that he was interested in the "longstanding evolutionary question - how did limbs actually develop out of ancestral fish fins?"
In order to answer this, Dr Woltering and his colleagues looked at the genetics of fin and limb developments in zebra fish and mice.
He was particularly interested in the division of the hand and arm (or digits), which does not exist in fish fins and "is considered one of the major morphological innovations during the fin-to-limb transition".

'Architect' genes

Tetrapods, the first four-legged creatures to walk the Earth, evolved from water to land over 380 million years ago in an era known as the Devonian period, often referred to as "the age of fish".
Fish and land animals both have clusters of genes called HoxA and HoxD and both are known to be essential in fin and limb development.
These Hox genes are sometimes referred to as "architect genes" as they are involved in making many of the physical structures animals possess.
However, when these Hox genes from fish were placed into mouse embryos, the genes that result in the arm were switched on but not the genes responsible for the hand or the digits.
This suggests that the genetic information needed to make tetrapod limbs was already present in fish before the tetrapods evolved.
"During embryogenesis it is key that developmental genes are switched on at exactly the right time and right place to ensure the development of a complete, coherent good functioning adult organism," Dr Woltering told BBC News.

Modernised genes

"The most surprising result is we found [DNA in fish] which is almost identical to the higher order DNA structure that we found in the mouse."
Another important conclusion of the study is that fish fins are not equivalent to the tetrapod hand and digits. Instead, the evolution of digits in land animals involved the repurposing of existing genetic infrastructure.
One of the co-authors of the study, Prof Denis Duboule, also from the University of Geneva, said: "Altogether, this suggests that our digits evolved during the fin-to-limb transition by modernisation of an already existing regulatory mechanism."
Other researchers in the field say that the study contains some flaws.
Jennifer Clack, from the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, who was not involved with the study, said using the zebrafish as a model for the experiments was a bad choice.
"We know that this animal, and by inference its relatives... lack some of the developmental stages that make digits in tetrapods," she explained.
Prof Clack added that other finned fish such as Polydon [paddlefish] "do have that mechanism, operating in a similar way to that in tetrapods, to make a complex fin skeleton".
This suggests, she said, that the zebrafish at some point lost the ability to make digits.
This view was echoed by Per Ahlberg from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He said that the molecular analysis was of a very high quality but that the evolutionary conclusions were flawed.
"This entire inference is based on the assumption that the zebrafish fin skeleton is reasonably representative of the ancestral condition for tetrapods, and it just isn't," he explained.
"Essentially, modern-day sturgeon, gar and bowfin (living primitive ray-finned fishes) have fin skeletons that are reasonably close to the shared ancestral condition for mouse and zebrafish."

Google, Big Brother and your Thermostat

Imagine that a stranger is following you around all day.
That is what Google Inc. and its chief rivals in Internet search, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc., preoccupy themselves with 24/7 – the collection of data about you based on your Web browsing history.
Google’s stated mission is to learn and make available to seven billion of us all the information in the world. To think it has invested tens of billions of dollars to do that without expectation of a profit defies common sense.
No, the business model of Google and its peers is to use the data they collect from monitoring your Web browsing toenable advertisers to “target” you with their online sales pitches. Inevitably that practice risks privacy invasion.
That issue most powerfully manifested itself earlier this month when a Canadian Internet user who remains nameless was found by Canada’s privacy commissioner to have had his privacy invaded in violation of Canadian law.
That individual, in searching for information about the sleep disorder known as sleep apnea, soon found that he was being “followed” by sleep-apnea-related ads everywhere he traveled on the Web. He construed this as an invasion of his privacy, and is one of the few people to have lodged a complaint about this practice with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
The incoming head of that office, Chantal Bernier, determined the complaint to be valid. “It is inappropriate for this type of information to be used in online behavioural advertising,” Bernier said in a Jan. 15 statement. “Organizations such as Google must ensure privacy rights are respected.”
Google famously was co-founded with a credo of “Don’t be evil.” It already has an elaborate policy on privacy that forbids the online display of advertisements based on religion, race, sexual orientation and, yes, health.
But self-policing has failed time and again, in financial services, in maintaining safe workplaces, in food safety, in proper railway management, and, for that matter, policing itself in racial profiling and misuse of Tasers.
Google acknowledges that its own self-policing routinely fails, that advertisers often breach its privacy policy.
In response to Bernier’s finding, Google has pledged to “upgrade” its monitoring of advertisements to determine their propriety – a practice, by the way, that traditional media outlets have employed for a century.
That Google should act to “upgrade” – which is to say, fix – its poorly enforced privacy standards only in reaction to headlines over the stalking of a sleep-apnea sufferer says all you need to know about how seriously Google has been taking privacy.
Google pledges to have its “upgrade” done by June, apparently the best that this $50-billion (revenues) enterprise that ate the Internet can manage by way of alacrity. It seems that no one regards this sloth as an issue. Bernier herself has commended Google on its prompt response.
Then again, the “behavioural advertising” cited by Bernier is not, in fact, illegal under Canadian law – the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, by name. Privacy law is maddeningly vague for Canadians, data collectors and advertisers alike. It forbids the targeting of Canadians based on “sensitive personal information.”
Well, what is that? Is it one’s extremist libertarian or communist political views, is that where we draw the line? Or my sciatica attack last summer, and the various EMS and hospital services provided for it? A Canadian’s belief that childless people are discriminated against? One’s views on capital punishment, genetically modified foods, appropriate sexual behaviour, and that Jennifer Lawrence rather than Amy Adams should have received a best-actress Oscar nod for American Hustle?
Google, as it happens, is poised to become still more intrusive, having just lavished $3.2 billion (U.S.) on a tiny outfit called Nest. That firm has invented a popular line of home thermostat and smoke-alarm devices.
Not long from now, electronic devices of all descriptions – the computers in your car, your kitchen appliances, your smartphones, your CD and DVD players – will “talk” to each other.
The endgame here is that your Android smartphone – Google’s Android runs the majority of the world’s smartphones – will eventually be collecting data not only in the form of information, such as emails and Web-page views, but data about your machines and what you ask them to do.
In time, you will be able to use your smartphone to remotely adjust that Nest thermostat. To instruct your TV to record a Lincoln Center performance you just learned of moments ago from a concert-listing app on your smartphone. In this age of telemedicine, you’ll be able to set off an alarm reminding your dad to take his meds. The data that search firms now collect – and Google already has pictures of your home and place of employment taken from street level and outer space – will ramp up to even more exhaustive levels.
Yet, here’s the nub of the matter. Very few of us seem to care that our lives are becoming even more of an open book, to be commercially exploited.
The big takeaway from the Edward Snowden revelations about global spying – Canada snooping on Brazil, and America’s National Security Administration (NSA) spying on, well, everybody – is a scandal of interest to a few journalists and practically no one else. It seems that post 9/11, we expect and perhaps hope to be monitored, for our collective safety.
Merchants have sought to know their customers better since a grocer regrettably had to turn away Adam for lack of the pomegranates he sought. So we’ve become sanguine about our merchants’ desire to know more about us. How else to explain why our sleep-apnea friend’s complaint has not resonated with the general public?
We do have a decision to make, a choice of just two options. We can demand that Internet search services get serious about self-policing. Or we can ask the state to determine with more precision what data can be collected and sold, and which cannot.
The first option is preferable, despite the sorry record of self-policing. Google and its rivals are most readily able to manipulate the data they’ve collected on us in a way that is not harmful to our interests.
For the state to do so opens the door to abuse. Who knows, a premier or governor might use it to close a bridge out of partisan revenge. At the very least, taxpayers would prefer not to finance a new bureaucracy to climb the steep learning curve on how to administer the greatest amassing of information in history.
Yes, Big Brother is watching. Turns out Big Brother is not just the state, as George Orwell predicted, but business too, anoutcome unforeseen by the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Police Identify Gunman in Maryland Mall Shooting, Motive Unclear

Police identified the gunman on Sunday in a deadly Maryland mall shooting as a 19-year-old from the nearby city of College Park, but had no word on his motive nor whether he had any ties to the two people he shot and killed in a skate shop.
The gunman, identified as Darion Marcus Aguilar, opened fire with a shotgun in the shop at the mall in Columbia, Maryland,about 20 miles west of Baltimore, on Saturday before apparently killing himself, police said.
Aguilar, who lived with his mother, arrived at the mall by taxi about an hour before the shooting began, Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon told a Sunday morning news conference.
He used a 12-gauge shotgun, and fired six to eight shots, killing Brianna Benlolo, 21, also of College Park, and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Mount Airy, Maryland, police said.
Both were employees of Zumiez, a skate shop where the shooting took place. A third person was also injured.
Police arriving at the scene found Aguilar's body and his backpack filled with crude explosives, and were initially concerned he had booby-trapped himself, McMahon said.

L'Isle-Verte fire survivors describe narrow escape

Nelida Pettigrew always had boots, a scarf and a warm coat ready at the door, just in case.
Her daughter made a point of ensuring that if Pettigrew ever needed to leave her room at the Résidence du Havre in a hurry, she would be properly dressed.
Last Thursday morning, when she realized the alarm bells echoing through the hallways weren’t triggered in error, Pettigrew threw on those warm clothes and escaped with the help of a neighbour.
She is one of only about 20 people authorities believe safely fled the burning seniors' residence in the heart of the small town.
The toll of the missing and dead in L’Isle-Verte stands at 32. Ten of those have been confirmed dead, Quebec provincial police said on Saturday. Three of those eight have been identified by the coroner’s office.
Police were initially reluctant to give a firm number of missing people, hopeful that some of the residents were away at the time of the fire and simply couldn’t be reached.
“We can assume the worst,” Lieut. Guy Lapointe of the Sûreté du Québec said at a news conference Saturday morning.
Police said, however, they will not confirm the deaths of any victims until their remains are recovered from the scene.
Survivors staying in neighbouring towns
On Saturday, emergency workers brought in extra equipment to help melt the 60-centimetre-thick ice that coats some of the rubble as the search for those still missing resumed.
Those who survived are now scattered between family members and other assisted living homes in neighbouring Trois-Pistoles and Rivière-du-Loup.
That’s where Pettigrew, 90, found herself after her home was destroyed in the blaze. Sitting in a room decorated with a vase of flowers and a few stuffed animals at a seniors' residence in Trois-Pistoles, she said she’s been well taken care of since the fire.
She escaped unharmed, but knows several of the people who didn’t make it out. She wiped away tears as she described one woman with whom she shared her meals who she believes has died.
“There’s others who died as well. I saw a few who had all their arms burned,” she said.
“I didn’t cry then, but I cried after.”
Pettigrew believes if she hadn’t been assisted by Arnaud Côté, a neighbour in the building's newer wing which sustained less damage than the older portion, she wouldn’t have made it out of the fire.
“He saved me,” she said. “If I didn’t have Mr. Arnaud Côté, I wouldn’t have known to take the emergency exit.”
Pettigrew went down two flights of stairs to safety, leaving her walker behind.
She was taken to a community centre and then to another location before she was moved to the room in Trois-Pistoles.
She hasn’t had the opportunity to talk to Côté, but said she’s immensely grateful.
“I want to hug him like he’s never been hugged before,” she said.
New wing saved by firewall
Other incredible stories of survival have emerged in L’Isle-Verte as more family members arrive at the scene to support their mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles who escaped the blaze.
Marie-Luce Dionne drove from Campbellton, N.B., to help her mother, who was also living in the newer wing of the Résidence du Havre. The flames were cut down by a firewall between the two sections. The newer portion is still standing. The older portion of the building is completely unrecognizable.
“I told my mom there were angels that night for her because she used to be in the apartment 206 [in the old section], apparently where the fire started,” Dionne said.
“She was moved down in the new [wing] on Dec. 27. There was a reason for that. She was saved maybe because she was moved there.”
Many residents and family members said they received exceptional care at the seniors home. Dionne said her mother has a very close relationship with one of the owners and she called once a week to speak with them about her mother’s care.
Dionne said her mother was assessed by medical staff, but didn’t require hospitalization.
“I’m pleased that she's OK,” she said. “She's my mom, I love her and she asked to go, but I said, ‘Mom, God is not ready for that. When you go I hope you go peacefully.’
“I'm so glad she was not in the building. I would not like her to die that way.”

Mini- Shuttle gets 2016 Launch Date

The Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has set 1 November, 2016, for the debut flight of its space shuttle replacement.
Known as the Dream Chaser, the winged vehicle will launch atop an Atlas V from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.
Though smaller than Nasa's famous orbiters, the Dream Chaser has still been designed to carry up to seven astronauts into low-Earth orbit.
The maiden voyage, however, will be an unmanned, autonomous flight.
The re-usable "lifting body" will spend about a day in orbit before returning to a landing strip on the US West Coast.
If all goes well, SNC hopes to mount its first manned mission in 2017.
And, ultimately, the Dream Chaser will land back at Kennedy on the same runway as used by the shuttles, and be serviced in Kennedy's processing facilities.
The date for the demonstration flight was announced in a joint media conference that included representatives from SNC, the US space agency (Nasa), and United Launch Alliance (ULA), which operates the Atlas rocket.
The 9m-long Dream Chaser is one of the three commercial human transportation systems currently being developed with the financial and technical support of Nasa.
The other two are more traditional capsule designs known as CST-100 and Dragon, from the Boeing and SpaceX companies respectively.
Nasa is likely to concentrate its resources on two, perhaps even only one, of these systems from late this year as it seeks to restore America's capability to launch its own astronauts into space. This capability was lost when the shuttles were retired in 2011 and sent to museums.
Today, all US personnel travel to the International Space Station in Russian Soyuz capsules, with each seat costing US taxpayers about $60m.
The three American companies say their indigenous vehicles will be much cheaper to operate.
SNC is insistent that development of the Dream Chaser will continue even if it misses out on Nasa's next round of seed funding.
"We are building the vehicle to be launched, and we have made a commitment to the launch," said SNC's Mark Sirangelo.
"[This first launch] is a direct relationship between Sierra Nevada and ULA, and Sierra Nevada is paying for the efforts of this; it's unconnected to the Nasa programme - the purchase of the launch was something done from company to company.
Two weeks ago, SNC announced tie-ups with the European and German space agencies that may lead to certain components and materials on future vehicles being sourced from across the Atlantic.

Watch Jatt Airways Full Movie

Toy Story: Old Favourites Fight Rise of the Tablet

The big players in the traditional toy market have come out fighting in Britain as little fingers are increasingly occupied by iPad-type devices at playtime.
Previously seen as the preserve of grown-ups, tablets are increasingly top of children's wish-lists.
The best-selling toy in Britain last year was the Furby, the cuddly robotic "pet" that has irritated millions of parents with its constant chatter. But tablet computers designed specifically for kids came close behind, according to the NPD market research group.
With toddlers frequently more nimble on touchscreens than their parents, major players including Samsung are cashing in with tablets designed for the lucrative and tech-savvy youth market.
At this week's London Toy Fair, manufacturers of traditional toys insisted they face a bright future -- but admitted the rise of tablets means they're in for a tough fight.
"We have to recognise these days that there's a place for tablets and for technology," said Jamie Dickinson, marketing manager at Playmobil, the German-based brand that has produced some 2.6 billion plastic figures since 1974.
"When children grow up and go into the adult world, they need to know how to use the technology," he told AFP as he stood in front of a display of Playmobil figures at London's Olympia exhibition centre.
"But there are lots of other skills that they need to learn, which only traditional toys can give them."
Playmobil is resisting the digital onslaught, with its global sales increasing by 5.3 percent to 531 million euros ($726 million) last year.
In the British market, the building sets and action figures markets will enjoy a 10-percent jump in growth this year, NPD predicts, partly thanks to toys linked to the football World Cup in Brazil.
Many of the toy firms displaying their wares in London were counting on the support of parents with an instinctive suspicion of the Internet and, by extension, tablets.
Metal construction kits by Meccano have been a boys' favourite since they were invented in England in 1909 -- and are "still very popular, especially in the eyes of parents, grandparents and those who buy gifts", said Kevin Jones, European marketing director for the brand's owner Spin Master.

More Canadian Businesses are accepting Bitcoin, Despite Reservations

MONTREAL - Will that be cash, credit card or Bitcoin?
A small number of Canadian businesses now accept Bitcoin, the digital currency that made its debut five years ago, and has been gaining momentum ever since.
Among the retailers is Quebec bed-and-breakfast operator David Mancini, who expects the payment method will have a practical appeal for foreign tourists visiting his community of Baie-Saint-Paul.
"You do not have to transfer U.S. dollars to Canadian, or pesos, etc.," said Mancini, 30, who runs the Gite TerreCiel.
Bitcoin transactions are seen as more convenient than other forms of payments as they are sent directly and instantly from one person to another, avoiding processing and other fees usually charged by banks or third parties. Travellers can avoid avoid carrying cash, or paying fees on travellers cheques or for currency exchanges, said Mancini.
Mancini has already convinced a handful of other community businesses _ the local coffee shop, hair salon, gift shop, acupuncture clinic and Tai chi martial arts school _ to accept Bitcoin, too.
"So if there's a tourist who comes here, they can spend their whole trip in Bitcoin," Mancini said.
The half-dozen merchants in Baie Saint-Paul are among 143 Canadian businesses accepting the digital currency, according to the Canadian Bitcoin Business Directory.
To use Bitcoins, users must first set up a so-called digital wallet, which gets managed through an app. The transactions involve buyer and seller scanning each others' smartphones to transfer the Bitcoins.
Vancouver saw its first Bitcoin automatic teller machine go live in a downtown Vancouver coffee shop last fall, followed by Toronto and Ottawa. Consumers can exchange Canadian cash for the digital currency at the current exchange rate.
But there remain concerns for the business community, according to researcher David Descoteaux, who recently prepared a report on the currency for the Montreal Economic Institute.
Descoteaux points out is is almost impossible to have any legal recourse in cases of fraud as, once confirmed, transactions are irreversible.
The volatility of the value of Bitcoins, which is not regulated by any central bank, is also an issue. It jumped 50 per cent on Nov. 18 after regulators signalled that digital currencies could be acceptable but plunged 30 per cent on Dec. 5 after China's central bank banned Bitcoins as currency, according to the online exchange Mt.Gox.
Fans of the currency say that because there's a finite supply of 21 million Bitcoins, the currency will continue to appreciate.
But, for businesses, the value of transactions could fluctuate greatly before the Bitcoin transactions are transferred into a hard currency, such as Canadian dollars.
Bitcoin was recently listed at $885 on VirtEx, Canada's virtual exchange to buy and sell Bitcoin.
Descoteaux said businesses are also wary of the tax implications of using Bitcoin, as any sales would have to be declared as income.
The Canada Revenue Agency has said using digital currency must be included in the seller's income for tax purposes and the amount included would be the value of the good or service in Canadian dollars. It also notes that digital currency can also be bought or sold like a commodity and any resulting gains or losses could be taxable income or capital.
As Bitcoin becomes more popular banks and governments are likely to step in and regulate it, Descoteaux said, and there will be more fees as it becomes mainstream.
Montreal company Bokor Renovation has done one transaction with Bitcoin in the "thousands of dollars" and owner Drazen Bokor is eager for more Bitcoin customers.
"The set up was easy," said Bokor. "I don't pay any fees. This is a very fast way to get the money."prepared a report on the currency for the Montreal Economic Institute.
Descoteaux points out is is almost impossible to have any legal recourse in cases of fraud as, once confirmed, transactions are irreversible.
The volatility of the value of Bitcoins, which is not regulated by any central bank, is also an issue. It jumped 50 per cent on Nov. 18 after regulators signalled that digital currencies could be acceptable but plunged 30 per cent on Dec. 5 after China's central bank banned Bitcoins as currency, according to the online exchange Mt.Gox.
Fans of the currency say that because there's a finite supply of 21 million Bitcoins, the currency will continue to appreciate.

US Athletes Cautioned on Wearing Team Gear Outside Sochi Venues

The US Olympic Committee has advised athletes taking part in the upcoming Sochi Games to avoid wearing their uniforms or Team USA logos outside Olympic venues, the State Department said.
The warning, released Friday, came amid growing concerns in Washington over security at the Games and as Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said the United States would work with Russian authorities on "appropriate arrangements" if an emergency required evacuating Americans from Sochi.
On advice from the State Department, the US Olympic Committee told athletes in a memo not to call attention to their nationality outside the Olympic village as a safety precaution, officials said.
"I think it is just common sense that perhaps if you are an American Olympic athlete, perhaps you don't want to advertise that so much, far outside of the venues," a senior administration official told reporters.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that "we are in very close contact with the US Olympic Committee on issues related to security."
But she added that Russia was not a unique case and that the US government often provides similar advice at "big international events."
The White House has signaled concern over Russia's security preparations for next month's Winter Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, with officials privately complaining about Moscow's reluctance to share intelligence on terror threats.
The United States has repeatedly offered to provide help to Russia to ensure security for the event, a question that came up in a telephone conversation between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
But Hagel, speaking at a news conference after talks with his French counterpart, said Russia had not taken up the US offer so far: "Right now, there has been no request from the Russian government."
The Pentagon has announced it is deploying two warships to the Black Sea as a "precaution" in case of a terror attack.
When asked if the US military had contingency plans in place to evacuate Americans in the event of a terror attack, Hagel said: "If we need to extract our citizens, we will have appropriate arrangements with the Russians to do this."
US officials later said that a potential evacuation might not require a role for the military as commercial planes might be used. And in any emergency, American authorities would need to work closely with the Russian government, officials said.
"First and foremost, Russia has the responsibility in responding to and coping with situations that might affect the safety, security and the presence of their guests," a senior administration official told reporters.
"All the American citizens there are their guests," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The US government will work with the Russian government on the various options should they need to be implemented."
As with previous Olympics, Washington has set up an operations center in Sochi with various security experts and a clear "chain of command" that would apply in any contingency, officials said.
Signaling its concern, the State Department issued an updated travel alert for Russia, urging all Olympics-bound US citizens to "remain attentive regarding their personal security at all times."
"Large-scale public events such as the Olympics present an attractive target for terrorists, and the US government continues to monitor reported threats of potential terrorist attacks in Sochi or in Russia in general," it said.
Insurgents based in North Caucasus republics such as Dagestan who are seeking their own independent state have vowed to disrupt the Games in a bid to undercut Putin.
In a recent video threat posted on a prominent North Caucasus extremist website, two men sitting in front of a jihadist flag warn of planned attacks at the February 7-23 event.

Secret Google Lab 'Rewards Failure'

Google X - or Google [x] as the internet search company would have it - is what it calls its "moonshot factory", where inventors and engineers are encouraged to collaborate on audacious ideas.
The X in Google X means 10 - making a problem 10 times better, with a timeframe of about 10 years.
Staff are encouraged to think of "science fiction-sounding solutions" and are rewarded even if they fail, as "Captain of Moonshots" Astro Teller says.

Coca- Cola Laptop Theft could have Comprimised Info

A theft of company laptops could have compromised info for 74,000 people.
A spokeswoman for the company said the laptops were stolen by a former employee responsible for maintenance and disposal of equipment, the business daily reported. The company on December 10 learned that personal information was stored on the laptops after recovering them, the newspaper said.
Coca-Cola could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.
The world's largest soft drink company has alerted domestic and Canadian employees about the security breach through a memo, the Journal reported.
Personal details such as social security numbers, driver's license numbers and credit-card information may have been compromised, the Journal said.
The company, which has managed to recover the laptops, which were not encrypted, contacted law enforcement authorities, while saying it could not confirm whether the information has been misused, the newspaper reported.

Baltimore Mall Shooting at Skateboard Store

Police in Maryland say three people died Saturday in a shooting at a mall in suburban Baltimore, including the presumed gunman, and another five people were injured.
The shooting took place at the Mall in Columbia, a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington.
"The shooting took place above the food court in a store called Zumiez, it's a skateboard shop," said Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon at a news conference early Saturday afternoon.
"He had a large amount of ammunition on and about him. We are approaching this with an abundance of caution," said McMahon. "The situation is still fluid, still evolving, still dynamic."
McMahon said no motive is known yet but revealed that one male and one female, both in their twenties and employees of the store, are dead as well as the gun man, whose identity is still unknown. It wasn't clear whether the shooting was random or if the shooter and victims knew each other.
The five other people injured included one person being treated for a gun shot wound and another four who were injured while trying to escape.
Authorities received a call to the police emergency dispatcher at around 11:15 a.m. local time from someone reporting that shots had been fired. Police responded to the scene and found three people dead, including one person who was found near a gun and ammunition.
The mall is now closed for the rest of the day as investigators piece together what happened.
Gunshots, people running
The mall, which is at the centre of the town, typically opens at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and it was not known how many shoppers or workers might have been present at the time of the shooting.
Witnesses described moments of panic as they heard a succession of gunshots and screaming as people ran for cover into nearby stores and hid behind locked doors.
Joan Harding of Elkridge, Maryland, was shopping with her husband, David, for a tiara for their granddaughter's 18th birthday. She said she heard something heavy falling, followed by gunshots and people running.
"My husband said, `Get down!' and the girl that worked in the store said, `Get in the back,' " Harding said. That is where they hid until police gave the all-clear..
People were directed out of the mall and into a parking lot, where some boarded a bus and others walked toward their cars. Some people were seen crying. McMahon said detectives were interviewing witnesses as they emerged from the mall to try to get a better picture of the events that had unfolded.
Laura McKinzles of Columbia works at a kiosk in the mall. She said she heard between eight and 10 gunshots, followed by people running and screaming. She ran into the backroom of a perfume store and locked the door.
Allison Cohen, who works at the apparel store "Lucky Brand Jeans," said she always felt safe at the mall.
"I truly never thought something like this would ever happen here. It's really, really shocking," Cohen said.

How do the Knicks Decide Who gets Courtside Seats?

The Knicks stink. But celebs still flock to Madison Square Garden to sit courtside at games. You see them every night: How do they get those tickets? Do they pay for them or are they free? And what if every celeb in the city wants to sit courtside to see LeBron? Who gets a seat and who gets a "sorry"? And who makes the decision?
Well, first off, some celebs pay for their seats. Even Carmelo Anthony's wife, LaLa. But for the rest of them, there's an entire celebrity-handling team with a SERIOUS system in place to determine who gets a seat, and where that seat is.
“If you’re an A-level person and we know the fans are going to go bananas when your picture goes up on the scoreboard, then there’s a value having you there,” Barry Watkins, the executive vice president for communications and administration for MSG's parent company, told The New York Times.
“We think it’s a big part of the brand. Win or lose, it’s one of the reasons people come to the games.”
So the A-listers get the seats on Celebrity Row, along with the celeb perks -- a special entrance and elevator, an usher who shows them to their seats, plus access to Suite 200, where they can enjoy an open bar, fine cuisine and other amenities.
Of course, nothing is really free. Celebs usually are asked to do promo spots for the team, appear at employee events or perform other small services. James Gandolfini appeared in character as Tony Soprano to woo LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire when they were free agents.
And if you don't play ball, well, prepare to face the consequences. Woody Allen apparently is banned from Suite 200 because he refused to film a short promo, according to his spokesperson. And Allen "understood completely," she added.

Figures Show Neymar Cost Barcelona 86.2 Million Euros

Josep Maria Bartomeu insisted Friday that Neymar cost the Catalan club 57.1 million euro, but figures revealed in the Barcelona president's first press conference showed the total outlay was in fact 86.2 million euro.
Outgoing president Sandro Rosell resigned from his post on Thursday, just a day after it was announced that a complaint by Barca socio Jordi Cases for misappropriation of funds in the deal would be investigated in the Spanish High Court.
Cases' lawyer, Felipe Izquierdo, then revealed on Thursday that the complaint could be extended to include both Bartomeu and the club's economic vice president, Javier Faus
With that in mind, Bartomeu came prepared Friday for his first meeting with the media and presented a series of documents showing the breakdown of the fee.
"I want one thing to be absolutely clear," he told the media at a press conference at Camp Nou. "Neymar's transfer cost 57.1m euro."
That is the figure that has been quoted by Barcelona from the outset, and the club was sticking to its story Friday. However, a total breakdown of the money paid out by the Blaugrana showed the Catalans had in fact invested 86.2 million euro in the Brazilian forward, without including wages.
The 86.2 million euro can be broken down as follows: 57.1 million euro for the transfer itself (of which 40 million euro went to the player's parents), 10 million euro in the form of a signing-on fee, 2.7 million euro in commission, 4 million euro in marketing, 2.5 million euro for Neymar's foundation and 9.9 million euro in scouting and collaborative deals with Santos.
"I guarantee we have not lied," Bartomeu said, claiming the other figures were not included in the transfer itself. "Football games are won on the field of play, and we have always been highly responsible in the way we have dealt with our contracts. My colleagues have a high level of expertise."
The new Barca chief was asked on a number of occasions why the club had chosen to reveal the figures now and not while former president Rosell remained in charge.
"We had a confidentiality agreement, and we were unable to disclose that information until now," he said. "It is thanks to Neymar's father, who got in touch with us earlier today, that we have been able to reveal these figures. He called us and allowed us to reveal the information because he thought the club's current situation was unfair."
Barcelona also revealed that Neymar will earn 56.7 million euro in wages over five years. He will also receive a 2-million-euro bonus for finishing in the top three on the Ballon d'Or shortlist but currently has no agreement to claim any extra money for winning titles with the Catalan club.

Google Patents taxi-and-eat ad tech

Technology giant Google has patented a way of linking online ads to free or discounted taxi rides to the advertising restaurant, shop or entertainment venue.
The transport-linked ad service could encourage consumers to respond more often to location-based special offers, experts say.
Algorithms would work out the customer's location, the best route and form of transport, Google says.
Analysts have welcomed the idea.
Gregory Roekens, chief technology officer at advertising company AMV BBDO, told the BBC: "This is trying to turn advertising into a utility and remove barriers for consumers. It's a really interesting idea."
Location-based
Advertisers will mine huge databases recording people's habits, likes and preferences so that ads can be highly targeted.
Combining this information with location data gleaned from wi-fi, cellular and GPS tracking will enable businesses to tailor their ads and special offers according to where people are, the time of day and their schedules.
The addition of free or cheap travel to the location will be the icing on the cake, Google hopes.
In August, Google's venture capital arm invested $258m (£156m) in Uber, the San Francisco-based car hire network.
Mr Roekens believes Google is envisaging customers making use of such services when responding to mobile ads in future.
And given the company's major investment in autonomous vehicle technology, the prospect of customers being ferried automatically to nearby business venues after responding to location-based ads on their smartphones does not seem too fanciful.
But this was still "several years away", said Mr Roekens.
"Travel takes a huge amount of people's time," he said. "So if people can use this time more productively and interactively while in the vehicle, there's another opportunity for advertisers."
Transport sweetener
In the same way that advertisers bid against each other for the rights to Google keywords online, the company sees them competing on transport costs too.
The real-time system would help advertisers work out the costs of offering the transport sweetener versus the potential profit margins, Google said.
"Getting a potential customer to a business location in order to conduct a sale may be one of the most difficult tasks for a business or advertiser," Google says in its US patent for the "transportation-aware physical advertising conversions" system.
Alex Kozloff, head of mobile at the Internet Advertising Bureau, told the BBC: "I think this success all depends on its execution and the consumer benefit."
She thought that consumers who abused the system - continually taking up the offer of a free ride without making a follow-up purchase - would soon be barred from receiving special offers.

New York Seeks to Double Recycling by 2017

More than 40,000 tonnes of waste a day, 7,000 employees and a fleet of more than 2,500 trucks: New York faces an uphill task in trashing its garbage and doubling recycling by 2017.
It is the US city that generates the most garbage: a dizzying 2.5 kilos (5.5 pounds) per person per day compared to two kilos in the rest of the country, according to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"Sanitation is the most important uniformed force on the street," writes Robin Nagle, anthropologist at New York University in her book "Picking Up".
"If sanitation workers aren't there, the city becomes unlivable, fast."
But New York, in so many other respects a municipal policy trailblazer for the United States, lags woefully behind its West Coast and European rivals on the issue of recycling.
Ron Gonen, New York recycling czar, says the amount of waste rises each year and that the city spends $330 million on trucking off its refuse to places like Ohio or North Carolina.
But in the last two years the city of 8.4 million, where businesses organize their own separate waste collection, has made serious if belated efforts to improve recycling.
Of the 11,200 tonnes of daily rubbish collected by the city, it is committed to increasing the rate of recycling from 15 to 30 percent by 2017, organic waste not included.
Private companies discard another 29,000 tonnes a day.
The city has partnered with private investors to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art recycling plant in Brooklyn.
The city has extended a pilot program to collect organic waste from 300 schools this year, up from 90 in the last.
From July 2015 restaurants, delis and grocers will also have to separate out organic waste and recycling.
"In the last two years there was phenomenal dedication. There is a lot of potential," Gonen told AFP.
'Catching up quickly"
Eric Goldstein, an expert from the Natural Resources Defense Council also working with the city, agrees.
"We are in an early stage of transformation,"
"We had a slow start, we are still not one of the leading cities, as Seattle or San Francisco. But we are catching up quickly by good steps forward."
He blamed the delay on being too focused on the short-term and shying away from long-term investments.
"The biggest challenge is that the progress of the Bloomberg administration continues with the new mayor," Goldstein told AFP, referring to the just-finished reign of billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg.
In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics
In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics opened in Brooklyn, operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, a world leader in the sector.
It took 10 years and $110 million from private and state investors to build the 44,515 square meter Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility along the East River.
"This is the largest sorting system of this type, to my knowledge, in the world, certainly in the United States," said Tom Outerbridge, general manager of the Sims plant.
The machinery is mostly Dutch and German. There is an educational center for students but at the moment it functions only eight hours a day with the plan to go 24-seven by spring.
Of the approximately 800 tonnes of plastic, glass and metal that the city collects each day, the plant currently treats about 272.
The rest goes to another plant in neighboring New Jersey. The two plants combined can recycle 1,180 tonnes a day according to Outerbridge, who has 25 years experience in the sector.
Recycling is not just good for the environment. It also generates revenue: an aluminum cube produced by Sunset Park weighing around 680 kilos can be resold for $1,000.

$22 000 of Eggs Stolen in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A thief in Puerto Rico has gotten away with the makings for one giant omelette.
Police in the U.S. territory say they are looking for someone who stole more than $22,000 worth of chicken eggs. They didn't specify exactly how many eggs are in the missing shipment.
Officers said Friday that a refrigerated truck parked in a distribution centre in the north coastal town of Hatillo was taken along with the eggs inside.
Authorities said the truck was worth $35,000.

Honesty Saves the Money

SASKATOON – A stressful start to a vacation ended happily for a Saskatoon man thanks to an honest tax driver.
John Bowden left more than $1,000 cash in a cab last month when he was dropped off at the airport, but he didn’t realize it until he was in Calgary about to board a flight to Mexico.
Bowden received a voicemail the next day from cab driver Kalim Khan.
Khan said he immediately contacted Bowden when he noticed the bag full of cash in the back seat of his cab.
He told Bowden he had his money and would hold it for him until he got back from vacation.
Khan, who is 37, personally dropped the cash off at Bowden’s home when he returned.
“I tried to call him back, but the phone was not responding,” Khan recalled of the moment he found the money. “I dropped him a message. I was really in a shocking position (and wondering) how is this guy going to enjoy his trip?
“I was thinking this would be a miserable situation for them.”
Khan said he didn’t think twice about returning the money. Many other Saskatoon taxi drivers would have done the same thing, he said.
“Even if it is a penny that belongs to somebody or 25 cents, give them back. That is your responsibility. If you are not giving them back, you are not honest to yourself and not honest to your society.”
Bowden offered Khan a $150 reward. Khan said he initially refused, but later told Bowden he would accept it and hang it on his wall as an “award.”
The best part about the potentially disastrous situation, said Khan, is that an unexpected friendship has developed. The two men text back and forth, and Bowden always requests Khan when he calls for a cab.

Two Big Screen iPhones are Coming this Year

Rumors of larger iPhones that take a page from the Android phablet handbook have been swirling around for a while now, and the WSJ is now chiming in with reports that two are coming this year. One with a screen bigger than 4.5 inches, the other with a screen bigger than 5 inches.
According to the WSJ's sources, both bigger iPhones will be clad in metal, much like the iPhone 5S, while the unapologetically plastic polycarbonate casings on the 5C fall by the wayside.
Apparently the smaller of the two blown-up iPhones is further along in development, and is currently being prepped for mass production, whereas the large one is still in earlier development, though still on track for release this year. Neither involves any fancy curved glass or anything.
Part of Apple's push to finally get to a bigger-screened model isn't necessarily to compete with gigantic Android handsets here at home, but rather because big screens are popular in China, a market that's been the apple of Apple's eye for a while now. Going goldpagne was apparently just one step of the process, and bigger screens look like the next.
Granted these are rumors, and if the largest-screen iPhone is still in early development stages, things could change, but it's worth nothing that the WSJ's info lines up preeetty well with a similar report from Bloomberg that hit late last year. The main discrepancy there seems to be a disagreement about whether or not these new iPhones will sport any curved glass, but the information about the sizes doesn't conflict.
How large that "larger than 5 inches" model will get before its design is finalized, and whether or not it will actually come out remains to be seen, but it looks more certain that ever that we might be in for something big.

Vancouver not a Fan of Canada Post's Stop On Home Delivery

Vancouver isn’t a fan of Canada Post’s plan to stop door-to-door delivery.
Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask the postal service to suspend the service cuts pending full consultation with communities across the country.
Meantime, city staff will research how the changes may affect residents, specifically seniors and people with disabilities, NPA Coun. George Affleck said.
“It all came as quite a shock to us to see the mailboxes being taken away and then the flippant comments from the CEO of Canada Post, saying it was good exercise for seniors to get out and walk to their post box,” Coun. Kerry Jang said.
Jang also questioned how the changes could affect Health Canada’s medical marijuana system, which relies on the postal service for delivery.
On top of difficulties for seniors, many of whom depend on mail for cheques as well as connections to the community, it will be challenging to retrofit single-family neighbourhoods to fit collective mailboxes to avoid congestion and litter, Coun. Geoff Meggs said.
While the post office is “obviously” seeing a dramatic evolution with the advent of email and online shopping, Meggs said it’s unfortunate that the union of postal workers is shouldering the blame for labour costs.
“In the last round of bargaining, postal workers made major, major concessions to rectify some of the imbalances in the pension funds,” he said.

Vancouver Housing Ranked 2nd Expensivest Housing in the World

Vancouver ranks second only to Hong Kong in having the least affordable housing, according to Demographia's 10th annual survey of 360 housing markets in nine Western countries.
The survey divided median housing prices in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. against median gross household income to come up with its ratings.
Under this rating system, homes in Vancouver cost 10 times median income compared with 15 times income in Hong Kong. Three times median income is considered affordable.
Struggling with 'sticker shock'
Headhunter Craig Hemer says the high cost of housing could affect some people's decision to move to Vancouver for work.
"If you're living in a five-bedroom home in one part of the country and coming here and bringing your family and expecting to live within the city, costs go up exponentially. And it's a bit of a sticker shock."
Hemer says companies will have to keep a close eye on housing affordability if they want to keep attracting executives to Vancouver.
"Will they have to adjust or change, provide greater incentives, provide housing allowances that offset some of these differentials? Those are strategies that are used periodically now, that might increase," says Hemer.
But UBC business professor Tsur Somerville says the high cost of housing in Vancouver may not be a bad thing.
"If you've got the most attractive city in the world, it should have the highest price-to-income ratio," says Somerville.
"The amenities both force up the house prices because people want to be there and they lower the incomes because employers can get away with paying less."
Canadian cities 'severely unaffordable'
Meanwhile, the problem of housing affordability is not unique to Vancouver.
Canada's major metropolitan markets all have a rating of "severely unaffordable," and the report listed Canadian housing as the most overvalued among 20 OECD nations.
In addition to Vancouver, the three least affordable metropolitan markets in Canada were all in British Columbia: Victoria, Kelowna and the Fraser Valley.
The country's most affordable markets were Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick.
However, when major markets are excluded, Canada's overall housing was rated only "moderately unaffordable," outperforming Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the U.K., where housing prices were all higher.
"Housing affordability is an important determinant of the standard of living, because higher-cost housing leaves less discretionary income," says the report. "Severely unaffordable markets are also more attractive to buyers seeking extraordinary returns on investment."
The report cites London, Vancouver and the U.S. West Coast as prime examples of this trend.
The study also cited a recent Royal Bank of Canada report.
"Detached housing, which is preferred in Canada," it says, "now requires more than 80 per cent of median household income, 2½ times the 32 per cent recommended by Canada Mortgage and Housing for mortgage eligibility."

A Bunny in a Hero's Ear Sparks Outcry

JOHANNESBURG—A new, 9-metre (29.5-foot) sculpture of Nelson Mandela is billed as the biggest statue of the South African leader. It also has a tiny, barely visible quirk: a sculpted rabbit tucked inside one of the bronze ears.
South African officials want the miniature bunny removed from the statue, which was unveiled outside the government complex in Pretoria, the capital, on Dec. 16, a day after Mandela’s funeral. The department of arts and culture said it didn’t know the two sculptors, Andre Prinsloo and Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, had added a rabbit, said to be a discreet signature on their work.
The bronze rabbit, sitting on its haunches with one floppy ear, is about half the height of the ear canal.
“It doesn’t belong there,” said Mogomotsi Mogodiri, a department spokesman. “The statue represents what everyone in South Africa is proud of.”
His department said in a statement that there are discussions on “how best to retain the integrity of the sculpture without causing any damage or disfigurement.”
Translation: pull the rabbit out of the ear without botching the statue. The giant work stands with arms outstretched, symbolizing Mandela’s devotion to inclusiveness, outside the Union Buildings, where the body of the prisoner who opposed white rule and became South Africa’s first black president lay in state after his Dec. 5 death at the age of 95.
Telephone calls and emails sent by The Associated Press to the artists were not immediately returned.
Earlier this week, South Africa’s Beeld newspaper quoted the artists as saying they added the rabbit as a “trademark” after officials would not allow them to engrave their signatures on the statue’s trousers. They also said the rabbit represented the pressure of finishing the sculpture on time because “haas” — the word for rabbit in the Dutch-based Afrikaans language — also means “haste.”
Paul Mashatile, arts and culture minister, said the sculptors have apologized for any offence to those who felt the rabbit was disrespectful toward the legacy of Mandela.
The government had appointed Koketso Growth, a heritage development company, to manage the statue project. CEO Dali Tambo, son of anti-apartheid figure Oliver Tambo, said he was furious when he heard about the rabbit, and said it must go.
“That statue isn’t just a statue of a man, it’s the statue of a struggle, and one of the most noble in human history,” Tambo said. “So it’s belittling, in my opinion, if you then take it in a jocular way and start adding rabbits in the ear.”
It would be, he said, like depicting U.S. President Barack Obama with a mouse in his nose.
Tambo said the artists, who belong to South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority, were selected for their talent but also in part because the project was a multi-racial effort in keeping with Mandela’s principle of reconciliation. He said their signatures could be added on the statue in a discreet place, perhaps on Mandela’s heel.

Turn Down the Heat to Lower the Obesity Risk

Keeping homes a little chillier as temperatures drop outside might help people burn more calories and protect their health, Dutch researchers say.
We spend about 90 per cent of our time indoors at home, school or work, scientists say. Now a paper published in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism proposes a little cold keeps that doctor away since regular exposure to mild cold could increase energy expenditure to tackle obesity.
"What would it mean if we let our bodies work again to control body temperature? We hypothesize that the thermal environment affects human health," Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt of Maastricht University Medical Center in The Netherlands said in a release.
The researchers describe two ways that people respond to cold. First, shivering helps protect us from hypothermia. In the past few years, scientists have also shown that adults carry brown adipose tissue, also called brown fat, which burns calories instead of storing them like conventional fat does. Brown fat is found around internal organs and between the shoulder blades.
"Maximal thermal comfort in the built environment may increase our susceptibility to obesity and related disorders, and in parallel requires high energy use in buildings," Lichtenbelt and his co-authors concluded.
"Letting our body spend more energy to maintain thermal balance may positively affect health on a population scale."
The researchers pointed to a Japanese study that found a decrease in body fat after people spent two hours per day at 17 C for six weeks. At their lab, the Dutch team has found that after spending six hours a day at 15 C, people shiver less, felt more comfortable and brown fat is activated.
In both young adults and the elderly, a previous study suggested that gradual temperature variations are accepted without significant discomfort. But Lichtenbelt notes that hospitals and long-term care homes often set the thermostat relatively high during winter.
While research aims to pinpoint the physiological basis, the idea of letting our body spend more energy to maintain its temperature remains a hypothesis that needs to be tested in long-term experiments. Lichtenbelt’s team and others are planning to have people live in cooler environments while tracking their weight.
It's too soon to tell if turning down the thermostat definitely helps with weight loss, Mitchell Lazar, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania said commenting on the paper to HealthDay News.
Previously, researchers in Stockholm have pointed out it’s not yet clear if brown adipose tissue burns more through metabolic activity.

Netflix stock up 17% after adding 2.3 million subscribers

Netflix's fourth-quarter earnings soared as the internet video service added another 2.3 million U.S. subscribers to burnish its status as one of the world's most popular entertainment options.
The financial results announced Wednesday topped analyst estimates, and Netflix basked in Wall Street's adulation. The company's stock surged $58.39 US, or more than 17 percent, to $392.12 US in extended trading. If the shares behave similarly in Thursday's regular session, the stock will hit its highest levels since Netflix Inc. went public nearly 12 years ago..
Investors tend to focus more on Netflix's subscriber growth because the widening audience provides the company with the means to negotiate the rights to show even more compelling content to show in the future.
Netflix Inc. ended December with 33.4 million U.S. subscribers who stream video over high-speed Internet connections, up from 31.1 million in September.
People are still flocking to the service. Netflix expects to gain an additional 2.25 million subscribers during the first three months of the year.
The Los Gatos, California company earned $48 million, or 79 cents per share, during final three months of last year. That compared to $8 million, or 13 cents per share, at the same time in 2012.
Revenue rose 24 per cent from the previous year to nearly $1.2 billion.

Chrome Extras Targeted by ad Firms

Adware pedlars are buying extensions for the Chrome browser and adding code that hijacks searches or inserts sponsored ads, reports suggest.
Extensions are self-contained software add-ons for Chrome that add specific functions to the browser.
At least three extensions for Chrome are suspected of being taken over by adware pedlars.
One developer said he sold his Chrome extension for a "four-figure" sum to an ad marketing firm.
Google has now removed two of the extensions believed to have been compromised in this way.

Cash offer

News that adware makers were seeking to buy up Chrome extensions emerged via the blog of developer Amit Agarwal.
In a blogpost, Mr Agarwal recounted how he had been offered a significant sum in late 2013 for an extension he wrote that worked with the Feedly RSS reader.
Soon after, the new owners of the extension updated it to provide adverts that invisibly replace links on the webpages people visit.
Mr Agarwal said he now regretted selling the extension and felt he had let down its 30,000 users.
Thousands of extensions are available for Chrome and many have been downloaded and installed millions of times.
Almost every modern browser can be extended via its own add-on program.
Further evidence of the practice of subverting popular add-ons to the Chrome browser came via a Q&A session on social news site Reddit.

Offers 'best avoided'

In that online chat the developers of the coupon-finding extension, Honey, said they had been approached by several makers of adware and malware who offered cash to take over the program.
One company offered Honey a "six-figure" sum every month if it co-operated, said the developers.
The company has turned down every offer because it believes it will do better in the long run by avoiding "shady" marketing practices.
A quick survey of the comment pages associated with Chrome extensions by tech reporter Ron Adameo suggested evidence that other add-ons had been compromised, too.
Many people were reporting that formerly benign add-ons had suddenly transformed into ad-spewing irritants after an update, he wrote in a report for Ars Technica.
"While it's extremely easy for a novice user to install an extension, it's nearly impossible for them to diagnose and remove an extension that has turned sour," he said.
Following the reports, Google has now removed two extensions revealed to have been take over by ad firms - one of which was the add-on created by Mr Agarwal.

A fake Ferrai bursts into flames

VANCOUVER -- A wannabe Ferrari that erupted into flames could easily have caused the downfall of a waterfront community near Lions Bay Friday, say fire officials.
Late Friday, Lions Bay Fire Chief Andrew Oliver got a call that a Ferrari had caught fire in a residential garage in Strachan Point, an unincorporated community about 30 kilometres north of Vancouver. But when firefighters got to the home, not only did they fail to find a supercar, they couldn’t find enough water to stop the blaze from spreading.
“The guy said it was a Ferrari, but it was a kit car,” said Oliver. “A poor man’s Ferrari ... he didn’t even have the big engine in it either.”
The dressed-up, two-door, four-cylinder Pontiac Fiero had seemingly gone up while its battery was being charged, Oliver said. The flames then spread to an (ostensibly authentic) Audi TT parked next to it and developed into a fully-involved fire within minutes of the call coming in.
The blaze would not have been particularly troubling were the home located in another community. But not only were firefighters not obliged to respond because Strachan Point doesn’t pay for municipal services, when crews began fighting the flames they realized they were dealing with a local water system that was shockingly inadequate.
“We thought we had it and then we (ran) out of water,” said Oliver.
He said the community has a small water supply connected to one-and-a-half inch diameter standpipes. Firefighters can connect to the equipment, but modern engines are typically fed by four or five-inch pipes that carry a far greater volume of water at a minimum of 500 gallons per minute.
“We were getting 25,” said Oliver.
The fire engines went through the 2,000 gallons of water they hauled in with them, and sucked the community’s estimated 8,000 gallon tank dry in no time, he said. Then crews fell back to pumping salt water onto the fire directly from the ocean.
The community of about 15 homes was completely unprepared for a fire, said Oliver, and eventually the firefighters realized they could not save the burning house. They told residents all they could do was try to stop the real danger that the fire could spread through the community.
Officials called in a fire boat from Vancouver and the crew braved dense fog to travel from the Burrard Inlet to Strachan Point.
“It was like pea soup Friday night and Saturday,” said Oliver. “They had gone underneath the Lion’s Gate Bridge and they couldn’t even see it.”
With help on the way, crews started fireproofing the surrounding homes. Their efforts paid off and by daybreak firefighters from three municipalities had put out the flames.
“When we left in the morning after getting this fire out, (residents) didn’t have enough water to brush their teeth,” said Oliver.
“They’ve got their head in the sand — they’ve been told they’ve got an issue,” he said, adding that fire officials had warned members of the community as far back as the 1990s that their water system was inadequate.
“You’ve got half a community that want to address it and half a community that don’t,” he said. “The guys with the biggest voices ... are being heard.”

Oliver said it’s a problem that also affects neighbouring communities. When engines from one municipality are called out to help fight a fire in another area, their halls need to be helped out by engines from yet another community, and so on.
“They were lucky we came,” he said.
The cost of the firefighting service — estimated to be in the tens of thousands — will be the responsibility of the owner of the home where the Faux-rrari was parked and possibly other residents.
The three bedroom, three bathroom home was on the market for an asking price of $1,850,000.
Lion’s Bay officials could not be reached to discuss whether Strachan Point residents have approached the municipality about extending services to their community.