SINGAPORE: Train services on the Northeast Line have been delayed due to a train fault on Thursday.
A caller to the MediaCorp hotline said a train has apparently broken down.
She said commuters have been told to take the bus to Serangoon station to continue their journey.
Delays of up to 20 minutes can be expected in train services in both directions.
One commuter said she had been stuck in the train for about 30 minutes.
- CNA/xq
Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar said the member had expressed regret over the unfortunate incident which had shaken the foundation of democracy.
Kumar said the untoward incident had led to abrupt adjournment of the House yesterday.
"It had shaken the foundation of democracy. Issues should be discussed in the House," the Speaker observed.
Kumar said the member has expressed regret and expected all members to discuss issues in the House.
Singh had snatched the copy of the Constitution (117th Amendment) Bill Narayanasamy.
The incident led to commotion in the House and triggered a war of words outside between the Congress and its ally SP, which is strongly opposed to reservation in promotion for SCs and STs in government jobs.
Parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath had said he would urge the Speaker to take action against the SP member.
A picture is worth a thousand words—or in the case of bats, a rabies diagnosis. A new study reveals that rabid bats have cooler faces compared to uninfected colony-mates. And researchers are hopeful that thermal scans of bat faces could improve rabies surveillance in wild colonies, preventing outbreaks that introduce infections into other animals—including humans.
Bats are a major reservoir for the rabies virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Previous research shows that bats can transmit their strains to other animals, potentially putting people at risk. (Popular Videos: Bats share the screen with creepy co-stars.)
Rabies, typically transmitted in saliva, targets the brain and is almost always fatal in animals and people if left untreated. No current tests detect rabies in live animals—only brain tissue analysis is accurate.
Searching for a way to detect the virus in bats before the animals died, rabies specialist James Ellison and his colleagues at the CDC turned to a captive colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Previous studies had found temperature increases in the noses of rabid raccoons, so the team expected to see similar results with bats.
Researchers established normal temperature ranges for E. fuscus—the bat species most commonly sent for rabies testing—then injected 24 individuals with the virus. The 21-day study monitored facial temperatures with infrared cameras, and 13 of the 21 bats that developed rabies showed temperature drops of more than 4ºC.
"I was surprised to find the bats' faces were cooler because rabies causes inflammation—and that creates heat," said Ellison. "No one has done this before with bats," he added, and so researchers aren't sure what's causing the temperature changes they've discovered in the mammals. (Related: "Bats Have Superfast Muscles—A Mammal First.")
Although thermal scans didn't catch every instance of rabies in the colony, this method may be a way to detect the virus in bats before symptoms appear. The team plans to fine-tune their measurements of facial temperatures, and then Ellison hopes to try surveillance in the field.
This study was published online November 9 in Zoonoses and Public Health.
Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.
"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.
"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"
House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."
Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.
"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."
Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.
Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.
Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.
Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.
The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.
But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.
"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.
Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.
"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.
Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."
"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.
"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."
SINGAPORE: Grassroots organisations under the People's Association umbrella are organising about 50 community countdown parties islandwide to usher in the new year.
80,000 residents are expected to join in the revelry, which will also feature more budding local performers. Some of the highlights include a cosplay event, stargazing, and fireworks.
For example, for the countdown at Boon Lay, local bands will perform for the residents, while at the cosplay event at the Sengkang West countdown party, organisers will try to set the first record for largest cosplay gathering in the Singapore Book of Records.
At Nee Soon GRC's countdown party, the fireworks display will be upped to five minutes - from three minutes in previous years.
People's Association's chief executive director Mr Yam Ah Mee said that in the last few years, he has noticed more youth community leaders getting involved in the planning and organising of these countdown parties.
"These youths have brought together new insights to how they would like to organise the countdown, to provide platforms for fellow other youths and fellow other residents to come - not just to watch the countdown, but to participate in the countdown. And the youths have also planned to involve more of the residents' talents so residents can showcase, using the platform of the countdown, to showcase their talents to fellow other residents," he said.
- CNA/ck
The House also saw noisy scenes over demands by women opposition members seeking adequate protection to women in the backdrop of the barbaric incident of rape on a 23-year old girl in Delhi on Sunday.
Members from Shiv Sena and BJP from Maharashtra were also in the well raising slogans for increasing cotton prices to Rs 6,000 per quintal and other measures to prevent suicides by cotton-growers.
As Lok Sabha reassembled at noon after an adjournment soon after question hour began, SP members trooped into the well raising slogans against the Constitution (117th Amendment) Bill, which provides for quota in promotions for SCs and STs in government jobs.
The Bill, which was passed by Rajya Sabha on Monday, is listed in the Lok Sabha for consideration and passing today.
The SP members raised slogans like "promotion mein aarakshan, nahi chalega, nahi chalega (we do not want reservation in promotions)".
They were followed by women MPs belonging to Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, JD(U) and BJP demanding protection for women against growing atrocities. Shiv Sena and BJP members from Maharashtra, carrying placards and raising slogans, also joined them in the Well.
After ordering laying of the papers, Speaker Meira Kumar said atrocities against women was "a serious issue and I too want a discussion on it" and asked the women members to give a notice so that it can be discussed.
Kumar then adjourned the House till 2pm as the uproar continued.
A hundred years ago, two teams of explorers set out to be the first people ever to reach the South Pole. The race between Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Britain became the stuff of triumph, tragedy, and legend. (See rare pictures of Scott's expedition.)
Today, another Antarctic drama is underway that has a similar daring and intensity—but very different stakes.
Three unprecedented, major expeditions are underway to drill deep through the ice covering the continent and, researchers hope, penetrate three subglacial lakes not even known to exist until recently.
The three players—Russia, Britain, and the United States—are all on the ice now and are in varying stages of their preparations. The first drilling was attempted last week by the British team at Lake Ellsworth, but mechanical problems soon cropped up in the unforgiving Antarctic cold, putting a temporary hold on their work.
The key scientific goal of the missions: to discover and identify living organisms in Antarctica's dark, pristine, and hidden recesses. (See "Antarctica May Contain 'Oasis of Life.'")
Scientists believe the lakes may well be home to the kind of "extreme" life that could eke out an existence on other planets or moons of our solar system, so finding them on Earth could help significantly in the search for life elsewhere.
Illustration courtesy Zina Deretsky, NSF
While astrobiology—the search for life beyond Earth—is a prime mover in the push into subglacial lakes, so too is the need to better understand the ice sheet that covers the vast continent and holds much of the world's water. If the ice sheet begins to melt due to global warming, the consequences—such as global sea level rise—could be catastrophic.
"We are the new wave of Antarctic explorers, pioneers if you will," said Montana State University's John Priscu, chief scientist of the U.S. drilling effort this season and a longtime Antarctic scientist.
"After years of planning, projects are coming together all at once," he said.
"What we find this year and next will set the stage for Antarctic science for the next generation and more—just like with the explorers a century ago."
All Eyes on the Brits
All three research teams are at work now, but the drama is currently focused on Lake Ellsworth, buried 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) below the West Antarctic ice sheet.
A 12-person British team is using a sophisticated technique that involves drilling down using water melted from the ice, which is then heated to 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees Celsius).
The first drilling attempt began on December 12, but was stopped at almost 200 feet (61 meters) because of technical problems with the sensors on the drill nozzle.
Drilling resumed on Saturday but then was delayed when both boilers malfunctioned, requiring the team to wait for spare parts. The situation is frustrating but normal due to the harsh climate, British Antarctic team leader Martin Siegert, who helped discover Lake Ellsworth in 2004, said in an email from the site.
After completing their drilling, the team will have about 24 hours to collect their samples before the hole freezes back up in the often below-zero cold. If all goes well, they could have lake water and mud samples as early as this week.
"Our expectation is that microbes will be found in the lake water and upper sediment," Siegert said. "We would be highly surprised if this were not the case."
The British team lives in tents and makeshift shelters, and endures constant wind as well as frigid temperatures. (Take an Antarctic quiz.)
"Right now we are working round the clock in a cold, demanding and extreme location-it's testing our own personal endurance, but it's worth it," Siegert said.
U.S. First to Find Life?
The U.S. team is drilling into Lake Whillans, a much shallower body about 700 miles inland (1,120 kilometers) in the region that drains into the Ross Sea.
The lake, which is part of a broader water system under the ice, may well have the greatest chances of supporting microbial life, experts say. Hot-water drilling begins there in January.
Among the challenges: Lake Whillans lies under an ice stream, which is similar to a glacier but is underground and surrounded by ice on all sides. It moves slowly but constantly, and that complicates efforts to drill into the deepest—and most scientifically interesting—part of the lake.
Montana State's Priscu—currently back in the U.S. for medical reasons—said his team will bring a full lab to the Lake Whillans drilling site to study samples as they come up: something the Russians don't have the interest or capacity in doing and that the British will be trying in a more limited way. (Also see "Pictures: 'Extreme' Antarctic Science Revealed.")
So while the U.S. team may be the last of the three to penetrate their lake, they could be the first to announce the discovery of life in deep subglacial lakes.
"We should have a good idea of the abundance and type of life in the lake and sediments before we leave the site," said Priscu, who plans to return to Antarctica in early January if doctors allow.
"And we want to know as much as possible about how they make a living down there without energy from the sun and without nutrients most life-forms need."
All subglacial lakes are kept liquid by heat generated from the pressure of the heavy load of ice above them, and also from heat emanating from deeper in the Earth's crust.
In addition, the movement of glaciers and "ice streams" produces heat from friction, which at least temporarily results in a wet layer at the very bottom of the ice.
The Lake Whillans drilling is part of the larger Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project, first funded in 2009 by the U.S. National Science Foundation with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
That much larger effort will also study the ice streams that feed and leave the lake to learn more about another aspect of Antarctic dynamism: The recently discovered web of more than 360 lakes and untold streams and rivers—some nearing the size of the Amazon Basin—below the ice. (See "Chain of Cascading Lakes Discovered Under Antarctica.")
Helen Fricker, a member of the WISSARD team and a glaciologist at University of California, San Diego, said that scientists didn't begin to understand the vastness of Antarctica's subglacial water world until after the turn of the century.
That hidden, subterranean realm has "incredibly interesting and probably never classified biology," Fricker said.
"But it can also give us important answers about the climate history of the Earth, and clues about the future, too, as the climate changes."
Russia Returning to Successful Site
While both the U.S. and British teams have websites to keep people up to date on their work, the Russians do not, and have been generally quiet about their plans for this year.
The Russians have a team at Lake Vostok, the largest and deepest subglacial lake in Antarctica at more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) below the icy surface of the East Antarctic plateau.
The Vostok drilling began in the 1950s, well before anyone knew there was an enormous lake beneath the ice. The Russians finally and briefly pierced the lake early this year, before having to leave because of the cold. That breakthrough was portrayed at the time as a major national accomplishment.
According to Irina Alexhina, a Russian scientist with the Vostok team who was visiting the U.S. McMurdo Station last week, the Russian plan for this season focuses on extracting the ice core that rose in February when Vostok was breached. She said the team arrived this month and can stay through early February.
Preliminary results from the February breach report no signs of life on the drill bit that entered the water, but some evidence of life in small samples of the "accretion ice," which is frozen to the bottom of the lake, said Lake Vostok expert Sergey Bulat, of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, in May.
Both results are considered tentative because of the size of the sample and how they were retrieved. In addition, sampling water from the very top of Lake Vostok is far less likely to find organisms than farther down or in the bottom sediment, scientists say.
"It's like taking a scoop of water from the top of Lake Ontario and making conclusions about the lake based on that," said Priscu, who has worked with the Russians at Vostok.
He said he hopes to one day be part of a fully international team that will bring the most advanced drilling and sample collecting technology to Vostok.
Extreme Antarctic Microbes Found
Some results have already revealed life under the ice. A November study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that subglacial Lake Vida—which is smaller and closer to the surface than other subglacial lakes—does indeed support a menagerie of strange and often unknown bacteria.
The microbes survive in water six times saltier than the oceans, with no oxygen, and with the highest level of nitrous oxide ever found in water on Earth, said study co-author Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center.
"What Antarctica is telling us is that organisms can eke out a living in the most extreme of environments," said McKay, an expert in the search for life beyond Earth.
McKay called Lake Vida the closest analog found so far to the two ice and water moons in the solar system deemed most likely to support extraterrestrial life—Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus.
But that "closest analog" designation may soon change. Life-forms found in Vostok, Ellsworth, or Whillans would all be living at a much greater depth than at Lake Vida—meaning that they'd have to contend with more pressure, more limited nutrients, and a source of energy entirely unrelated to the sun.
"Unique Moment in Antarctica"
The prospect of finding microscopic life in these extreme conditions may not seem to be such a big deal for understanding our planet—or the possibility of life on others. (See Antarctic pictures by National Geographic readers.)
But scientists point out that only bacteria and other microbes were present on Earth for 3 billion of the roughly 3.8 billion years that life has existed here. Our planet, however, had conditions that allowed those microbes to eventually evolve into more complex life and eventually into everything biological around us.
While other moons and planets in our solar system do not appear capable of supporting evolution, scientists say they may support—or have once supported—primitive microbial life.
And drilling into Antarctica's deep lakes could provide clues about where extraterrestrial microbes might live, and how they might be identified.
In addition, Priscu said there are scores of additional Antarctic targets to study to learn about extreme life, climate change, how glaciers move, and the dynamics of subterranean rivers and lakes.
"We actually know more about the surface of Mars than about these subglacial systems of Antarctica," he said. "That's why this work involves such important and most likely transformative science."
Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt, the just-retired president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, an international coordinating group, called this year "a unique moment in Antarctica."
"There's a growing understanding of the continent as a living, dynamic place—not a locked-in ice desert—and that has created real scientific excitement."
Residents of Sandy Hook, Conn., gather every year under an enormous tree in the middle of town to sing carols and light the tree. The tree is lit this year, too, but the scene beneath it is starkly different.
The tree looms over hundreds of teddy bears and toys, but they are for children who will never receive them. The ornaments are adorned with names and jarringly recent birth dates.
Wreaths with pine cones and white ribbons hang near the tree, one each for a life lost. A small statue of an angel child sleeps among a sea of candles.
A steady flow of well-wishers, young and old, tearfully comes to cry, pray, light candles, leave gifts and share hugs and stories.
CLICK HERE for complete coverage of the massacre at Sandy Hook.
The Christmas season is a normally joyful time for this tight-knit village, but in the wake of a shooting rampage, holiday decorations have given way this year to memorial signs. And instead of cars with Christmas trees on top, there are media vans with satellites.
Connie Koch has lived in Newtown for nine years. She lives directly behind Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that Friday morning, he had also killed his mother at home.
Koch said the shocked town, which includes the Village of Sandy Hook, is experiencing a notably different Christmas this year.
"It's more somber, much more time spent in prayer for our victims' families and our friends that have lost loved ones," she said as she stood near the base of the tree.
CLICK HERE for a tribute to the shooting victims.
Her family has been touched by the tragedy is multiple ways.
"My daughter, she lost her child that she babysat for for six years," she said, holding back tears. "And for her friend who lost her mother. And for my dear friend who lost one of her friends in the school, one of the aides.
"It's hard. And there will be much prayer on Christmas morning for these people, for our community."
Koch said her community always rallies in the face of tragedy, but the term "hits close to home" resonates this time more than ever before. She says the only way to make it through is one day at a time.
"It's all you can do, one hour at a time," Koch said. "For me, I don't even want to wake up in the morning because I don't want to have to face it again. You feel like it's still just a dream and with the funerals starting, it's becoming more real. It's becoming more final."
Another Newtown parent, Adam Zuckerman, stood by the makeshift memorial with a roll of red heart stickers with the words, "In Our" above a drawing of the Sandy Hook Elementary School welcome sign. He was selling the stickers to collect money for a Sandy Hook victims' fund.
"It's a lot," he said of the events of the past few days. "We don't know how it's going to affect our community, but I feel very strongly that I needed to do something to keep it positive, to keep this community positive."
Zuckerman's 20-year-old stepdaughter came home from college for winter break the night before the shooting. As a high school student, she worked in one of the town's popular toy stores.
"She knew a lot of the kids," he said of his daughter. "Their parents brought them in over the years. We have other friends who have lost family here and good friends who are dear friends with the principal of the school. … It's pretty rough."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg may be the most outspoken elected official advocating for enhanced gun safety laws, but the New York public servant who has hands-on experience in Washington getting such legislation passed is promoting the use of smart phones to hail cabs in Manhattan.
In a prior life, New York’s taxi and limousine commissioner, David Yassky, played a major role in writing the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which outlawed the production of certain types of weapons and limited the size of high capacity magazines. As chief counsel to then-Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the House crime subcommittee, Yassky had a front-row seat to the last major congressional deal on guns — in which a congressman’s eleventh-hour change of heart gave gun-control advocates a two-vote victory in the House, where Democrats were in the majority.
NEW YORK: Retail giant Walmart aggressively bribed Mexican officials to get the necessary permits to open more than a dozen supermarkets across the country, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper said its own investigation had identified 19 store sites that were the target of bribery, and detailed one case in which more than $200,000 in bribes was paid to build a supermarket near famed Aztec ruins.
"The Times' examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals.
"Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited," it said.
Wal-Mart "used bribes to subvert democratic governance -- public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals."
The Times said Walmart officials themselves did not pay bribes, but arranged for outside lawyers and other middlemen to deliver envelopes of cash that could not be traced back to the company.
The Times said Walmart managed to build a Sam's Club in one of Mexico City's most densely populated neighbourhoods without a construction, environmental or even traffic permit after paying bribes totalling $341,000.
It paid $765,000 in bribes to build a large refrigerated distribution centre in an environmentally fragile flood basin north of the city, the Times said.
And in the case it detailed, Walmart paid more than $200,000 in bribes to build a supermarket in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, near the town's famed step pyramids.
The Times said it used a $52,000 bribe to alter a zoning map that had been approved by the town's elected leaders, and bribed other officials to help it circumvent laws on protecting antiquities, sparking protests in 2004.
Walmart said in response to the story that it had launched an investigation a year ago into potential violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- which prohibits bribery -- but had not yet reached any final conclusions.
"We are committed to having a strong and effective global anti-corruption programme everywhere we operate and taking appropriate action for any instance of non-compliance," spokesman David Tovar said in the statement.
Walmart is the largest private employer in Mexico, with 221,000 people working in 2,275 stores across the country, according to the Times.
- AFP/al
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