Today on New Scientist: 30 November 2012

Dinosaurs might have once gazed into the Grand Canyon It had been thought that the canyon formed 6 million years ago, but now two geologists say it is actually closer to 70 million years oldSaturn's rings may double up as a moon factory A new model suggests Saturn's famous rings spawned the planet's moons. Could the mechanism explain the moons of Uranus, Neptune and even Earth?Gaming the future:...

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Facebook ordered to remove paedophile monitoring page

LONDON: A Facebook page set up to monitor paedophiles has been removed after a judge in Northern Ireland ruled Friday that it risked infringing the human rights of a convicted sex offender.The man, who cannot be identified, started legal proceedings against the social networking site after discovering his photograph and threatening comments had been posted on the page.High Court judge...

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Facebook photo a Powerball prank? A million users hedge bets

The number of shares is jumping by the minute. Daniels clarifies in a comment beneath this photo that the million bucks will go to one of the sharers.If you can't be the winner of a multimillion-dollar jackpot, you might as well snag your 15 minutes of fame -- and have a little fun -- for not winning it.That seems to have been the thinking of one Nolan Daniels, who posted a photo of himself on Facebook...

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Photos: Kilauea Lava Reaches the Sea

Into the Sea Photograph by Hugh Gentry, ReutersA spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into...

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Parents Fight Back Against Deadly Discipline

Parents of children who have died or been injured while being manhandled, held down or locked up in America's public schools are fighting back.Dozens have filed lawsuits and many are speaking out publicly to end what they say is an epidemic of harsh measures being used in schools to subdue unruly or aggressive children – many of whom suffer from autism or other disabilities....

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Projections of sea level rise are vast underestimates

Expect more water to lap at your shores. That's the take-home message from two studies out this week that look at the latest data on sea level rise due to climate change. The first shows that current projections for the end of the...

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Lohan arrested over NY fight, charged over LA crash

NEW YORK: US actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested for assault in New York Thursday, and also charged over a car crash in California, in a double legal blow which could in theory land her back to jail.The perennially troubled 26-year-old, who is struggling to get her life back on the rails and remains on probation for a 2011 jewellery theft, was arrested in the early hours after a fight at...

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Ceglia ordered to pay Facebook $90,000 in legal fees

Paul Ceglia Facebook profile photo(Credit:Facebook)In an effort to make billions of dollars by suing Facebook, Paul Ceglia is actually putting a large dent in his own wallet. Federal Magistrate Leslie Foschio ordered Ceglia to pay the social network almost $90,000 in attorney fees today, according to the Los Angeles Times. The order comes because of Ceglia's last-minute cancellation of legal depositions...

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Pictures: Inside the World's Most Powerful Laser

Photograph courtesy Damien Jemison, LLNLLooking like a portal to a science fiction movie, preamplifiers line a corridor at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF).Preamplifiers work by increasing the energy of laser beams—up to ten billion times—before these beams reach the facility's target chamber.The project's lasers are tackling "one of physics' grand...

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Accused WikiLeaker Manning Speaks for First Time

Private First Class Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified and confidential military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, took the stand in a military court today to make his first public statements since his arrest in 2010.Manning appeared confident and animated at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade...

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