Holmes 'Delighted' by Creepy Self-Portraits: Victims

After two days of apparent indifference, accused Aurora shooter James Holmessmiled and smirked at disturbing self-portraits and images of weapons shown in court today, according to the families of victims who watched him.

"When he sees himself, he gets very excited and his eyes crinkle," Caren Teves said outside of the courthouse, after the hearing. "Your eyes are the window to the soul and you could see that he was very delighted in seeing himself in that manner."

Teves' son Alex Teves, 24, died in the shooting.

Prosecutors showed photos that Holmes took of himself hours before he allegedly carried out a massacre at a Colorado movie theater. He took a series of menacing self-portraits with his dyed orange hair curling out of from under a black skull cap and his eyes covered with black contacts. In some of the photos, guns were visible.

Those haunting photographs, found on his iPhone, were shown in court today on the last day of a preliminary testimony that will lead to a decision on whether the case will go to trial. The hearing concluded without Holmes' defense calling any witnesses.

The judge's decision on whether the case will proceed to trial is expected on Friday.

James Holmes: Suspect in Aurora Movie Theatre Shootings Back in Court Watch Video

Police Testify at Hearing for Accused Colorado Gunman Watch Video

Couple Surprised by Rebuilt Home After Sandy Watch Video

Holmes, 25, is accused of opening fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012, killing 12 people and wounding dozens others during a showing of "Dark Knight Rises."

The court room's set-up kept members of the media from being able to see Holmes' face as the photos were displayed, but victims and their families could watch him.

Teves said that Holmes was "absolutely smirking" when images of his weapons and the iPhone photos he took of himself were shown in court.

"I watched him intently," Caren Teves' husband Tom Teves said. "I watched him smile every time a weapon was discussed, every time they talked about his apartment and how he had it set up (with booby traps), and he could have gave a darn about the people, to be quite frank. But he's not crazy one bit. He's very, very cold. He's very, very calculated."

Holmes' has exhibited bizarre behavior after the shooting and while in custody. His defense team has said that he is mentally ill, but have not said if he will plead insanity.

"He has a brain set that no one here can understand and we want to call him crazy because we want to make that feel better in our society, but we have to accept the fact that there are evil people in our society that enjoy killing any type of living thing," a frustrated Tom Teves said. "That doesn't make them crazy. And don't pretend he's crazy. He's not crazy."

The photos presented in court showed Holmes mugging for his iPhone camera just hours before the shooting.

Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.

Half-a-dozen photos showed Holmes with his clownish red-orange hair and black contact lenses giving the photos a particularly disturbing edge.

In one particularly odd image, he was making a scowling face with his tongue out. He was whistling in another photo. Holmes is smiling in his black contacts and flaming hair in yet another with the muzzle of one of his Glock pistols in the forefront.

Yet another photo showed him dressed in black tactical gear, posing with an AR-15 rifle.

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Time to nail the number one problem of green energy

ONE of the frustrating things about renewable energy is that there is so much of it available and yet we utilise so little. Every minute, enough solar radiation hits the earth to meet global energy needs for a year. Wind energy, too, could single-handedly power the planet.

Why don't we harvest this bounty and end our dangerous reliance on coal, oil and gas? One of the main reasons is the storage problem. Whereas fossil fuels conveniently package up chemical energy for release on demand, wind and solar only generate electricity at the whim of the weather.

What's needed is a way to store surplus wind and solar energy. That much has been obvious for years, but there are signs that the problem is finally reaching its rightful place - at the very top of the renewables agenda. Technologies are advancing, particularly liquid-air storage (see "Saving renewable energy with air"). Investment is pouring in. And outdated regulations that have acted as a drag are being swept away. Anyone who tells you that renewable energy will never be reliable enough to replace fossil fuels is increasingly telling yesterday's story.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Third Delhi gang-rape suspect to plead not guilty: lawyer

NEW DELHI: A third suspect accused of fatally gang-raping a 23-year-old student in a moving bus in New Delhi last month will plead not guilty to all charges, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

Advocate M L Sharma said he would file the plea on behalf of Ram Singh, the driver of the bus where the attack allegedly took place which has fuelled angry protests across India.

"I am representing Ram Singh and I will file a 'not guilty' plea," Sharma, who is also representing Singh's brother Mukesh and labourer Akshay Thakur in the case, told AFP.

The advocate said on Tuesday that the other two men would also plead not guilty to the string of charges including gang-rape, murder and kidnapping.

"Whoever committed this heinous crime should be punished but my clients are not the real culprits," he said.

It is not yet clear who will represent the two remaining defendants. All five men are residents of New Delhi slums aged from 19 to 35. A sixth accused, who is 17, is to be tried in a separate court for juveniles.

Officials at Tihar jail, the maximum security prison where the accused are held, confirmed that Sharma had met Ram Singh late on Tuesday.

Prosecutors have said they have evidence of bloodstains linking the men to the attack, but the advocate said he would challenge the police over their handling of evidence, while refusing to give details.

The next hearing, to be held behind closed doors, has been scheduled for Thursday when a magistrate is expected to transfer the case for trial in a special fast-track court.

The brutal attack on the medical student and her boyfriend has stirred anger in India, with politicians and the murder victim's family calling for the death penalty for the culprits.

The pair had been to watch a film when they were lured onto a bus. The gang are accused of repeatedly raping and violating the woman with an iron bar, causing horrific internal injuries.

- AFP/xq

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BlackBerrify your iPhone with Spike keyboard case

LAS VEGAS--No one likes typing on a touch screen. So what if your iPhone case had a very mini QWERTY keyboard?

That's just what Spike from SoloMatrix is designed to be. When we heard about it last year, the Spike TypeSmart keyboard was part of a Kickstarter campaign that proved successful.

The tactile keyboard swivels out from its case and its keys make contact with the iPhone's on-screen keyboard.

It doesn't require separate charging, docking, or an app, and it works with capacitive conductivity through the screens on the
iPhone 4 and
iPhone 5.

Whenever a key is pressed and makes contact with the screen, it creates a grounded state.

Spike attaches to the phones in a snap. There's a number key that pushes the number menu on the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. Then you can type using the alternate number designations for the TypeSmart.

But your fingers better be very nimble indeed to get the hang of it. When I tried typing a few sentences, certain keys didn't register and words were missing letters.

I have a BlackBerry Curve, and there's really no comparison between the ease of use of its keyboard and Spike. The former wins hands down.

But if you want something very compact that doesn't require separate power or Bluetooth, Spike may be worth considering.

The iPhone 4/4s version will launch in February for $49.95, with the iPhone 5 edition following.

The price may drop if there's high order volume, according to Cody Solomon, SoloMatrix co-founder.

Since the campaign raised some $81,000, Spike could prove popular indeed.

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Dead Lotto Winner's Wife Seeks 'Truth'

The wife of a $1 million Chicago lottery winner who died of cyanide poisoning told ABC News that she was shocked to learn the true cause of his death and is cooperating with an ongoing homicide investigation.

"I want the truth to come out in the investigation, the sooner the better," said Shabana Ansari, 32, the wife of Urooj Khan, 46. "Who could be that person who hurt him?

"It has been incredibly hard time," she added. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone."

Ansari, Khan's second wife, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she prepared what would be her husband's last meal the night before Khan died unexpectedly on July 20. It was a traditional beef-curry dinner attended by the married couple and their family, including Khan's 17-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, Jasmeen, and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the paper, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She called 911.

Khan, an immigrant from India who owned three dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June and said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.

"Him winning the lottery was just his luck," Ansari told ABC News. "He had already worked hard to be a millionaire before it."

Illinois Lottery/AP Photo

Chicago Lottery Winner Died From Cyanide Poisoning Watch Video

Lottery Murder Suspect Dee Dee Moore Found Guilty Watch Video

Lottery Winner Murder Trial: Opening Statements Begin Watch Video

Jimmy Goreel, who worked at the 7-Eleven store where Khan bought the winning ticket, described him to The Associated Press as a "regular customer ... very friendly, good sense of humor, working type of guy."

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Khan's unexpected death the month after his lottery win raised the suspicions of the Cook County medical examiner. There were no signs of foul play or trauma so the death initially was attributed to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which covers heart attacks, stroke or ruptured aneurysms. The medical examiner based the conclusion on an external exam -- not an autopsy -- and toxicology reports that indicated no presence of drugs or carbon monoxide.

Khan was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

However, several days after a death certificate was issued, a family member requested that the medical examiner's office look further into Khan's death, Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina said. The office did so by retesting fluid samples that had been taken from Khan's body, including tests for cyanide and strychnine.

When the final toxicology results came back in late November, they showed a lethal level of cyanide, which led to the homicide investigation, Cina said. His office planned to exhume Khan's body within the next two weeks as part of the investigation.

Melissa Stratton, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, confirmed it has been working closely with the medical examiner's office. The police have not said whether or not they believe Khan's lottery winnings played a part in the homicide.

Khan had elected to receive the lump sum payout of $425,000, but had not yet received it when he died, Ansari told the AP, adding that the winnings now are tied up as a probate matter.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Authorities also have not revealed the identity of the relative who suggested the deeper look into Khan's death. Ansari said it was not her, though she told the AP she has subsequently spoken with investigators.

"This is been a shock for me," she told ABC News. "This has been an utter shock for me, and my husband was such a goodhearted person who would do anything for anyone. Who would do something like this to him?

"We were married 12 years [and] he treated me like a princess," she said. "He showered his love on me and now it's gone."

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Tony Fadell: From iPhones to sexing up thermostats

After quitting Apple, the tech guru behind the iPod wanted to revolutionise our homes – starting with the humble thermostat

After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?
Not at all! The plan was to retire with my wife, who also worked for Steve [Jobs], and spend time with our children. We didn't see them because we were working so madly at Apple. We wanted to build a house in Lake Tahoe. I wanted to design the greenest, most connected house that I could. That's when I found out about the thermostat problem. These devices had not seen innovation in 30 years. They were the same as the ones our parents had. I wanted something that was very different.

Your solution was the NEST. Tell me about it
It uses algorithms and sensors to remember the temperatures you like, create a custom schedule for your home and turn itself down when you are away. And you can use your smartphone, tablet or computer to control it remotely. We call it the thermostat for the iPhone generation. It has a big dial, not fiddly buttons.

Did Steve Jobs have any input?
I was going to talk to Steve about it. He knew we were working on something, but he didn't know what. When it was time to show him, he said he couldn't do it. Unfortunately, he died just a few weeks later, before he could see it.

Is the NEST just the start of a range of smart-home devices?
Absolutely. But if you look at what we did at Apple after the iPod came out, it took us five years to start thinking about the iPhone and two more years to finally ship it. I would love to make more devices, but our goal is to make the NEST successful first.

Who would have believed the iPod could turn into the iPhone, then the iPad?
Even I wondered how many people would buy an iPad. But you have to be at the right place in the cultural time. We plan a similar trajectory with the NEST, with the ways that emerging behaviours can happen in the home through interconnected devices. You can't start with all of these things at once because people's minds get blown. You start with very simple things, simple concepts, and then you can build on them.

Will people have to continually upgrade their thermostats, as they do with cellphones?
Unlike a cellphone, you're not going to change the NEST every 18 months! They are supposed to hang on your wall for 10 to 15 years. Our goal is to continue to improve it via software, and we have built tonnes of extra capability into this device to allow that to happen. For example, we have a new update that gives an energy report - it shows how you're doing compared with last month, and even compares you to your neighbours.

Was it your aim to raise awareness of the energy we waste heating our homes?
The NEST starts people thinking about how they're using energy in the home. But it's also a great party trick. You get people whipping out their phones and saying "Check out my NEST at home! Watch, I'm going to freeze my wife!"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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Korean pop icon Rain confined to barracks to "repent"

SEOUL: South Korean pop icon Rain has been confined to barracks for a week, the defence ministry said Tuesday, after his dating put him on the wrong side of the country's strict military service rules.

"Under a decision by the disciplinary commission of his unit, Rain will be confined to his barracks to spend seven days of repentance," a defence ministry spokesman said.

The 30-year-old singer is a little over halfway through the two-year military service that is mandatory for all able-bodied South Korean men.

The country's well-oiled celebrity gossip machine went into overdrive last week when it was confirmed that Rain had begun dating Kim Tae-Hee, 32, a TV drama star with a massive following in Japan.

But fan excitement was tempered by questions over how the couple had managed numerous reported dates. During their military service men are given little free time, even for family visits.

"He breached regulations against having private meetings while on official duty," the ministry spokesman said.

The punishment was one of the lightest options open to the disciplinary committee.

Rain, whose real name is Jung Ji-Hoon, is one of the biggest names in the world of K-pop, which commands a huge following in South Korea, across much of Asia and beyond.

After tabloid pictures of his dates with Kim emerged, the defence ministry's website was bombarded with messages calling for him to be disciplined.

Some suggested he be forced to repeat his military service like the "Gangnam Style" star Psy, who was made to serve twice after it emerged he had furthered his showbiz interests during his first stint.

Military service is taken extremely seriously in South Korea, which remains technically at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty.

Apart from those with physical disabilities, exemptions are rare and anyone refusing to serve -- for moral or religious reasons -- faces an automatic jail term.

Celebrities are frequently caught attempting to evade military service for fear they might be forgotten by their fans while in uniform.

Just as he was about to be called up in 2002, Korean-American pop singer Steve Yoo gave up his Korean nationality and became a naturalised US citizen.

The South Korean government considered it an act of desertion and he was deported and banned from returning for life.

-AFP/fl

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Synology lauches DSM 4.2 beta at CES 2103

DSM 4.2 adds a slew of improvements to already excellent Synology NAS servers.

(Credit:
Synology)

LAS VEGAS -- When it comes to network attached storage (NAS), Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system has been as good as it gets. Yet it's about to get even better.

The NAS server maker announced and demoed today at
CES 2013 the public beta of its latest DSM 4.2.

This is a major upgrade from DSM 4.1 that brings improvements for both home and business users at no additional cost. Since DSM contain a vast amount of features, the list of improvement is also really long. However, the major and a noticeable new/improved features include:

• The Quick Connect features now supports for DS audio, DS photo+, and the new DS cloud apps for remote access with witout the need of configuring the router. This makes setting up the server much easier for non-advanced users.
  
  
  
  

  DSM offers a web-interface that resembles that of a native user GUI of an Linux distribution, both in terms of look and functionality.

  
  
  (Credit:
  Synology)
  
  
  
  
• A new mobile app called DS cloud is now available for iOS users to sync files from their mobile device, the way Dropbox works.
• 
  The server's Package Center is now revamped to organize applications in a better way. Applications are add-in programs that users can install (or remove) from the server to add more functions and features to it.
• 
  The Cloud Station is now upgraded to version 2 and allows for nearly unlimited accounts and folders sync. The size limit of sync-able files is also increased to 10GB (up from 5GB). This is the limit to individual files, you can syn an unlimited amount of data.
• DS video app, which plays back videos stored on the server, is now available for iOS,
  Android, and Windows phones, and offers support for MKV subtitles
• DS photo+ app can now be set to automatically sync photos from iOS devices
• Video Station's new player allows streaming video to a browser without the need for browser plugins
• Audio Station now supports streaming to Bluetooth speakers

Other than that, for business users, DSM 4.2 also include Synology High Availability (SHA) features for all x86-based models (not just select few), allowing even smaller businesses to minimize the risk of downtime. DSM 4.2 now provide support for support for Amazon's Glacier service as another cloud backup options.

Like previous update, DSM 4.2 beta is available via download and manual upgrade for those who wanna try it out. When the final version is available, which is in a month or so, users can choose to upgrade to it from automatically from within the exiting DSM's user interface.

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Primitive and Peculiar Mammal May Be Hiding Out in Australia

It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.

Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.

The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.

(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)

Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.

(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)

“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”

John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.

With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).

As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.

Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.

No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.

As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.

This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”

Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.

Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”

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