Mall Shooter Quit Job, Was Going to Hawaii

In the days before he stole a semiautomatic weapon and stormed into an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people in a shooting spree, Jacob Roberts quit his job, sold his belongings and began to seem "numb" to those closest to him.Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, told ABC News today that the man who donned a hockey mask and opened fire on Christmas shoppers...

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Today on New Scientist: 11 December 2012

Out-of-season's greetings from the Arctic frost flowers Season's regards from an icy meadow in the Arctic, but it's no winter wonderland and please don't dash out into itHow hacking a mosquito's heart could eradicate malaria Watch how a double-pronged trick helps mosquitoes remain healthy while carrying disease, a process that could be exploited to eliminate malariaNew drug lifts hard-to-treat...

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No attempt to shoot down N.Korea rocket: Japan govt

TOKYO: Japan did not try to shoot down a North Korean rocket as it passed over its southern island chain of Okinawa, the government said Wednesday, strongly condemning the launch.Tokyo confirmed the launch had taken place and that said it believed parts of the rocket had fallen into the sea off the Korean peninsula, with another part dropping into the ocean near the Philippines."Launch...

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Tech companies push Congress for feds' wireless spectrum

A group of tech companies is pressing Congress to provide more spectrum for use by portable electronics devices such astablets and smartphones.A letter sent to lawmakers today and signed by Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, and Samsung urged the technology committees in the House and Senate to consider auctioning some of the spectrum currently used...

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Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal ObservatoryThis image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon...

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Shooter Among 3 Dead at Oregon Mall

A masked gunman opened fire at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing at least two people before he was killed himself, police said."I can confirm that we believe at this point that there was one and only one shooter involved and that that shooter is deceased," Clackamas County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. James Rhodes said. "In addition to that we have...

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Doha summit launches climate damage aid

The latest summit to stop climate change, held in Doha, Qatar, over the past two weeks has been roundly slammed. Little was agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the latest modelling, carried out by the Climate Action Tracker consortium shows global averages temperatures are still set to rise by at least...

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Twitter adds Instagram-style photo features

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Monday added Instagram-style smartphone photo sharing features after the Facebook-owned service made it impossible for Internet users to integrate its images into tweets."Starting today, you'll be able to edit and refine photos, right from Twitter," the globally popular one-to-many messaging service said in a blog post."Every day, millions of people come to Twitter...

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Antivirus guru John McAfee sells rights for movie about his life

John McAfee during a CNN interview before his capture last week.(Credit:CNN/screenshot by CNET)It's still a mystery where John McAfee will eventually land, but his life story is destined for the small screen.Currently in custody in Guatemala and fighting deportation efforts that could return him to Belize to face questions about a murder, the antivirus-software pioneer has signed a deal that gives...

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U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by...

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