Inauguration to Cost Millions But Total Price Unclear

How much will all the inaugural events cost? It's hard to say.

While most events that occur in the capital have a hard-and-fast budget, the inauguration's many moving parts, safety concerns and large geographic reach make it hard to quantify – especially before the main event.

In 2009, ABC reported the total cost of Obama's first inauguration was $170 million. While incumbent presidents historically spend less on a second inauguration, it's unclear what the total bill will be this time around. Analysis of some of the known appropriations so far puts the total at $13.637 million, but it will no doubt be a much larger price tag when everything is accounted for.

RELATED: 12 Things You Didn't Know About the Inauguration

One of the main chunks missing from this year's tab is the budget for the Presidential Inaugural Committee – the group responsible for using donated money to put together this year's celebrations, including National Day of Service, the Kids' Inaugural Concert, the Parade and the Inaugural Balls.

In 2009, the PIC collected more than $53 million in donations, according to a report filed with the Federal Elections Commission 90 days after the inauguration.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Politically Dressed: Inauguration First Daughters Watch Video

While enthusiasm for the inauguration was running higher that year, it is possible the PIC will haul in more money this time around, as they have eliminated some of the self-imposed regulations on the kinds of donations they can accept. For his first inauguration, President Obama did not take money from corporations or gifts that exceeded $50,000.

In 2013, his committee did away with those rules. PIC spokesman Brent Colburn would not say why the change took place, insisting that each committee operates independently from the precedent set by the inaugurations before – even if staff like Colburn are repeats on the committee from 2009.

RELATED: Inauguration Weekend: A Star-Powered Lineup

The PIC also won't say how much they have already collected or even what their goal was. Colburn explained that these are "moving budgets," which won't stabilize until after the inauguration.

They have, however, released the names of donors on their website weekly. As of Friday afternoon, they were up to 993 donors.

Another leg of the costs is covered by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. They take care of the swearing-in ceremony and the Congressional luncheon. For those events they have a total budget of $1.237 million, down by about $163,000 from 2009. Whereas the PIC budget comes from donations, the American taxpayers foot the bill for the JCCIC.

Beyond those two inauguration-focused groups, there are a myriad of broader organizations that spend money on the inauguration as well.

RELATED: Plenty of Room at the Inns for 2013 Inauguration

A Congressional Research Service report from December says the government spent $22 million reimbursing local and state governments and the National Park Service for their participation in the 2009 inauguration, but that figure is low. The D.C. government alone received twice that amount, according to the mayor's office. Officials from D.C., Maryland and Virginia estimated their total need to be $75 million.

NPS got an appropriation from Congress of $1.2 million so far this year, according to communications officer Carol Johnson, and another $1.4 million went to the U.S. Park Police.

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Today on New Scientist: 18 January 2013

Megaballoon launches big bang telescope in Antarctica

The 2.7-tonne EBEX telescope will detect the weak light that remains from the big bang, helping to reveal the origin and evolutionary history of the universe

Moth navigation probed to improve micro-drone flight

Flying through a virtual forest, hawkmoths tailor their navigation according to visibility conditions

Mussels with backpacks monitor Mississippi's health

Sensors that monitor individual mussels' behaviour will keep watch on the ebb and flow of pollutants in the Mississippi

Cognitive impairment in premature babies not permanent

Babies born preterm often have a smaller cortex - but they still retain a healthy number of brain cells. With the right care, they may escape cognitive impairment

Zoologger: The first solar-powered vertebrate

The spotted salamander is the first backboned animal known to harness sunlight to make food - with the help of photosynthetic algae

What Westerners can learn from tribal societies

In his new book, the Pulitzer-prizewinning author Jared Diamond looks to tribal societies to see how we used to live, and what we can learn from our past

Feedback: Excessive precision at rugby World Cup

Rugby, cancelling cancellation, low, low prices, and more

Matt Damon's new movie is about people, not fracking

The much-debated new movie Promised Land, starring and co-written by Matt Damon, puts a human face on fracking, but doesn't drill deep enough

Spider shackled to work in silk-spinning factory trial

Watch how silk can be harvested from an orb spider, using a technique that draws out fibres on a motorised wheel

Time for science to seize political power

Could you imagine a government that builds its policies on carefully gathered evidence? In the UK, this is no longer a crazy dream, says Michael Brooks

Wild weather: Extreme is the new normal

The wild weather that greeted the new year is a taste of things to come

Wind turbines supercharged with superconductors

Turbines built with superconducting innards promise to triple the wind-power generation of conventional turbines - and be lighter to boot

Time to get serious about curbing drinking

Responsibility for reducing the harmful consumption of alcohol can no longer be left to the industry that produces the stuff

Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?

Publicly available information has been used to match many genomes with their owners' identity, highlighting concerns over misuse of genetic data

Flu checks its biological clock to evade detection

Like a thief, flu viruses know they have only so long until they are spotted - so they use an alarm clock

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Toyota settles 'bellwether' US wrongful death suit

WASHINGTON: Japanese automaker Toyota has settled a wrongful death lawsuit in the United States over sudden, unintended acceleration that allegedly killed two people in Utah in 2010.

"We are satisfied that both parties reached a mutually acceptable agreement to settle this case," Toyota Motor Corp said in a statement late Thursday.

A Toyota spokeswoman, Celeste Migliore, told AFP it was the first "bellwether" settlement among hundreds of cases pending in a federal court in California.

Toyota did not reveal financial details of the settlement, but said in a statement it "will have a number of other opportunities to defend our product at trial... and other legal venues."

"We would emphasize that at no time has anyone put forth any reliable scientific evidence of an alleged electronic defect in our vehicles that could cause unintended acceleration," it said.

The settled case involved a man and woman in the US state of Utah killed when the Toyota Camry they were traveling in slammed into a wall.

Critics have argued that Toyota's accelerator technology was behind several deadly accidents.

But Japan's biggest automaker said its accelerator technology was confirmed as safe.

"We sympathize with anyone in an accident involving one of our vehicles; however, we continue to stand fully behind the safety and integrity of Toyota's Electronic Throttle Control System, which multiple independent evaluations have confirmed as safe," the statement said.

The acceleration problem prompted a recall of millions of Toyota vehicles in 2009-2010, severely damaging the carmaker's once-sterling reputation.

Toyota has argued at least in some cases that the problems involved floor mats that came loose and trapped the accelerator pedal.

Last year, Toyota added two models to 2009-2010 recalls citing the floor mat problem.

Toyota's mishandling of its vehicle problems led to a US congressional probe, more than $50 million in fines from US regulators and public apologies by its chief.

In December, the automaker announced an agreement to pay about $1.1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by US vehicle owners who said the value of their cars had fallen due to the recalls.

It also agreed to pay a record $17.35 million fine for failing to promptly notify US authorities that floor mats could also be trapped under the accelerators of 2010 Lexus models.

In November Toyota agreed to pay $25.5 million to settle claims from shareholders who lost money after its stock price plummeted in the wake of the recalls.

- AFP/de

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Sign up for SimCity beta -- if you can

Trying to get into the SimCity beta is an exercise in patience, but at least the game looks beautiful.

(Credit:
Maxis/EA)

Did you miss the last SimCity beta sign-up event? You're in luck, because EA and Maxis want to give you another chance to get in on the beta for the highly anticipated building game. There's a catch, though: beta builders only get to play a snapshot of game for up to one hour at any point between Friday, January 25 and the following Monday, January 28.

Amusingly, the actual process of signing up for the beta might be more difficult than playing the game itself, as the sign-up page seems to have some serious problems going on right now -- most likely due to a high influx of interested participants.

On 10 separate occasions, I was unable to sign up for the SimCity beta, experiencing several errors that would make any gamer with pre-hypertension smash his or her keyboard into smithereens. For example, after signing in with my Origin account, I then had to enter a simple Captcha verification code and was told I entered it incorrectly every time ("Your verification code was incorrect"). I know how to read a Captcha, so, no, you're incorrect EA.

Then, after somehow getting my Captcha code to actually work, the sign-up window disappeared and I was redirected back to the main SimCity Web page, only to see that refresh into a window displaying a Drupal error (the content management system EA uses for the Web site). How wonderful.

The SimCity Twitter account prescribed a remedy for those experiencing these errors: "Heads up, Mayors -- if you're having trouble viewing the #SimCitybeta page, try a hard refresh and clear your cache."

After clearing everything (and I mean absolutely everything, short of throwing my computer out the window) I kept encountering the same set of errors. In fact, I just tried it again, and after clicking on the beta page, it simply disappears into the void. Hopefully the actual game is easier than this horrid beta sign-up experience, which I'm sure will go back to normal after people stop trying to sign up. Good luck.

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First Human Contact With Large Emperor Penguin Colony

One of the largest emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica was discovered last month by a team from the International Polar Foundation's Princess Elisabeth station.

The penguin colony had previously been identified through satellite imagery by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey. The penguins themselves didn't show up very clearly, but their excrement stains on the ice did.

Expedition leader Alain Hubert, who has spent seven seasons in Antarctica, long suspected a colony existed somewhere along the vast coast near Princess Elisabeth station. "When you go on the coast," explained the Belgian explorer, "after ten minutes, penguins come out of the water to look at who you are and what you are doing."

The satellite images gave Hubert and his team a rough idea of where to start looking. When ice research brought them within 37 miles (60 kilometers) of the probable location, they hopped on their snowmobiles for a side trip. The team traversed steep crevasses from the continent's cliffs down to the ice shelf, which has been shifting 650 feet (200 meters) toward the sea each year. "We were lucky to find it," said Hubert.

They finally came upon the colony at 11 p.m. on December 3, when the sun was still shining during the Antarctic summer. Spread out on the ice were 9,000 emperor penguins, about three-quarters of them chicks. Despite his polar experience, Hubert had never seen a full colony before. "You can approach them," he said. "When you talk to them, it's like they are listening to you."

Researchers hope penguins will tell them—through population numbers and colony locations—how they are faring with climate change. Emperor penguins breed on the sea ice. If the ice breaks up early, before the chicks can fend for themselves, the chicks die and the future of the colony is imperiled.

Hubert has high hopes for his newly met neighbors because they located their nursery on top of an underwater rift, where the sea ice is less likely to melt. "They are quite clever, these animals."

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Algeria Terrorists Want to Trade US Hostages for Blind Sheikh

The al Qaeda-linked terrorists holding Americans and other Westerners hostage at a gas plant in Algeria have now demanded the release of two convicted terrorists held in U.S. prisons, including the "blind sheikh" who helped plan the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, in exchange for the freedom of two American hostages, according to an African news service.

The terror group calling itself the Masked Brigade, which raided the BP joint venture plant in In Amenas early Wednesday, reportedly contacted a Mauritanian news service with the offer. In addition to the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they demanded the release of Aifia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who shot at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.

Asked about the unconfirmed report of a proposed swap, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said firmly, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists." She repeated the statement again when questioned further. She also said she was not prepared to get into any details about the status of Americans in "an ongoing hostage situation."

At least three Americans were being held hostage by the militants when the Algerian military mounted a rescue operation at the facility Thursday that reportedly resulted in casualties.

Five other Americans who were at the facility when it was attacked by the terrorists are now safe and believed to have left the country, according to U.S. officials.

Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images

Algeria Hostage Situation: Military Operation Mounted Watch Video

Reports that dozens of hostages were killed during the Algerian military's attempt to retake the compound have not been confirmed, though Algeria's information minister has confirmed that there were casualties. It's known by U.S. and foreign officials that multiple British, Japanese and Norwegian hostages were killed.

According to an unconfirmed report by an African news outlet, the militants said seven hostages survived the attack, including two Americans, one Briton, three Belgians and a Japanese national. U.S. officials monitoring the case had no information indicating any Americans have been injured or killed, but said the situation is fluid and casualties cannot be ruled out.

On Friday, a U.S. military plane evacuated between 10 and 20 people in need of medical attention, none of them American, from In Amenas and took them to an American medical facility in Europe. A second U.S. plane is preparing to evacuate additional passengers in need of medical attention.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament today that the terror attack "appears to have been a large, well coordinated and heavily armed assault and it is probable that it had been pre-planned."

"The terrorist group is believed to have been operating under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a criminal terrorist and smuggler who has been operating in Mali and in the region for a number of years," said Cameron.

Cameron said Algerian security forces are still in action at the facility. On Thursday, he said that the situation was "very bad … A number of British citizens have been taken hostage. Already, we know of one who has died. ... I think we should be prepared for the possibility for further bad news, very difficult news in this extremely difficult situation."

The kidnappers had earlier released a statement saying there are "more than 40 crusaders" held "including 7 Americans."

U.S. officials had previously confirmed to ABC News that there were at least three Americans held hostage at the natural gas facility jointly owned by BP, the Algerian national oil company and a Norwegian firm at In Amenas, Algeria.

"I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation," said Panetta. "I don't think there's any question that [this was] a terrorist act and that the terrorists have affiliation with al Qaeda."

He said the precise motivation of the kidnappers was unknown.

"They are terrorists, and they will do terrorist acts," he said.

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Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?

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Are we being too free with our genetic information? What if you started receiving targeted ads for Prozac for the depression risk revealed by your publicly accessible genome? As increasing amounts of genetic information is placed online, many researchers believe that guaranteeing donors' privacy has become an impossible task.

The first major genetic data collection began in 2002 with the International HapMap Project – a collaborative effort to sequence genomes from families around the world. Its aim was to develop a public resource that will help researchers find genes associated with human disease and drug response.

While its consent form assured participants that their data would remain confidential, it had the foresight to mention that with future scientific advances, a deliberate attempt to match a genome with its donor might succeed. "The risk was felt to be very remote," says Laura Lyman Rodriguez of the US government's National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Their fears proved to be founded: in a paper published in Science this week, a team led by Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used publicly available genetic information and an algorithm they developed to identify some of the people who donated their DNA to HapMap's successor, the 1000 Genomes Project.

Anonymity not guaranteed

Erlich says the research was inspired by a New Scientist article in which a 15-year-old boy successfully used unique genetic markers called short tandem repeats (STRs) on his Y chromosome to track down his father, who was an anonymous sperm donor. Erlich and his team used a similar approach.

First they turned to open-access genealogy databases, which attempt to link male relatives using matching surnames and similar STRs. The team chose a few surnames from these sources, such as "Venter",and then searched for the associated STRs in the 1000 Genomes Project's collection of whole genomes. This allowed them to identify which complete genomes were likely to be from people named Venter.

Although the 1000 Genome Project's database, which at last count had 1092 genomes, does not contain surname data, it does contain demographic data such as the ages and locations of its donors. By searching online phonebooks for people named Venter and narrowing those down to the geographic regions and ages represented in the whole genomes, the researchers were able to find the specific person who had donated his data.

In total, the researchers identified 50 individuals who had donated whole genomes. Some of these were female, whose identity was given away because of having the same location and age as a known donor's wife.

Matter of time

Before publishing their findings, the team warned the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions involved in the project about the vulnerability in their data. Rodriguez says that they had been anticipating that someone would identify donors, "although we didn't know how or when".

To prevent Erlich's method from being used successfully again, age data has been removed from the project's website. Erlich says that this makes it difficult, although not impossible, to narrow the surnames down to an individual.

"The genie's out of the bottle," says Jeffrey Kahn of Florida State University in Tallahassee. "It's a harbinger of a changing paradigm of privacy." A cultural zeitgeist led by companies such as Facebook has led to more information sharing than anyone would have thought possible back in 2002 when HapMap first began, he says.

Recurring problem

This is not the first time genome confidentiality has been compromised. When James Watson made his genome public in 2007, he blanked out a gene related to Alzheimer's. But a group of researchers successfully inferred whether he carried the risky version of this gene by examining the DNA sequences on either side of the redacted gene.

While someone is bound to find another way to identify genetic donors, says Rodriguez, the NIH believes it would be wrong to remove all of their genome data from the public domain. She says that full accessibility is "very beneficial to science", but acknowledges that the project needs to strike a careful balance between confidentiality and open access.

It is especially pertinent, says Kahn, because genetic data does not just carry information from the person from whom it was taken. It can also reveal the genetic details of family members, some of whom might not want that information to be public. A relative's genome might reveal your own disease risk, for example, which you might not want to know or have an employer learn of. While laws prohibit health insurers and employers from discriminating against people based on their genetic data, it would not be difficult to give another reason for denying you a job.

An individual's relatives could not prevent that individual from learning about themselves, says Rodriguez, but researchers should encourage would-be genome donors to discuss the risks and benefits with their families.

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22 killed in third day of deadly Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: A spate of bombings targeting Shiite Muslims across Iraq killed 22 people on Thursday, the latest in a spike in unrest amid weeks of anti-government protests and a political crisis engulfing the country.

The attacks marked the third consecutive day of violence which has claimed 81 lives overall, including that of a Sunni Iraqi MP killed by a suicide bomber and 33 others who died in twin car bombs in an ethnically mixed northern city.

It comes as Iraq grapples with a long-running political dispute, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki facing protests hardening opposition against his rule and calls from many of his erstwhile government partners for his ouster.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest bombings, but Sunni militants often launch attacks in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

The bloodiest of Thursday's blasts took place in Dujail, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, where a car bomb outside a Shiite mosque killed nine people and wounded 56 others, said town mayor Mohammed Hassan.

A car bomb killed seven other people and wounded 17 near a football stadium on the outskirts of the predominantly Shiite city of Hilla, south of the capital, officials said.

Witnesses reported residents throwing stones at a police officer after he blamed locals for helping militants carry out the bombing. Police in the town where the attack took place said the officer was later detained.

Bombings also struck Baghdad, Hawija and Karbala, while two soldiers and two policemen were killed in separate shootings near the northern cities of Mosul and Tuz Khurmatu.

There were no casualties in Hawija but two people were killed and one wounded in a roadside bomb in north Baghdad.

And in Karbala, a Shiite shrine city south of the capital, 17 people were wounded, including eight Afghan Shiite pilgrims, in a morning blast, followed by two explosions in the evening that left at least seven more injured.

Afghan ambassador to Baghdad Mohammed Anwarzai confirmed to AFP that a number of his compatriots were wounded in the morning blast.

The violence comes a day after 49 people were killed in attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital -- Iraq's bloodiest day since November 29 -- including seven who died from twin car bombs in the city of Kirkuk.

On Tuesday, a suicide attacker killed a Sunni Iraqi MP, Ayfan al-Essawi, west of Baghdad. Hundreds of mourners attended Essawi's funeral outside the mostly Sunni town of Fallujah on Wednesday.

The lawmaker was a former leader of the Sahwa -- Sunni tribal militias who turned against Al-Qaeda and sided with the US military from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency.

Sahwa fighters are frequently targeted for attacks by Sunni militants who view them as traitors.

The violence comes amid a political crisis that has pitted Maliki against several of his ministers just months ahead of key provincial elections.

Weeks of anti-government demonstrations in Sunni Arab majority areas, supported by several parties that are members of Maliki's unity cabinet, have hardened opposition against the premier, a Shiite.

The violence and political disputes come with barely three months to go before provincial elections, Iraq's first polls in three years and a key barometer to gauge the popularity of Maliki and his rivals.

Attacks in Iraq are down from their peak in 2006-2007, but they are still common across the country.

- AFP/jc

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Troubleshooting a freezing or hanging OS X menu bar

The OS X menu bar is a central location for accessing system resources in the Apple menu, application-specific menus, and also a number of system settings through menu extras that can be appended to the right side of the menu bar. Some extras that are on by default include the time and date, battery level, and volume control, but others can be added to the bar, including VPN status, keychain, the script menu, and Bluetooth status.

Though these menu extras are convenient, there may be times when problems occur with this part of the system menu, such as freezes and hangs. Typically, only the right-side of the menu bar will hang, so while you can still access the File, Edit, and Apple menus among others to the left of the bar, when you move your mouse to the right you will see it turn to the spinning color wheel or otherwise be nonfunctional.

This problem usually happens because of incompatibilities with third-party menu extras installed on your system. The menu extra feature in OS X is a convenient way for developers to give quick access to their programs' features, and is often used for malware scanners, firewalls and filters, input managers, and network monitors to give you quick updates on their activities.

So, if you are experiencing problems with the menu bar hanging, try first updating any program you have installed that uses the menu bar. A common one that has resulted in menu bar hangs is the popular iStats Menu system monitor, but others may cause issues as well and a quick update should make sure they are the version that's most compatible with your version of OS X.

Another source for menu bar hangs may be problems with the menu bar setup in OS X, so removing the preferences file that manages the menu bar may help. To do this, in the Finder choose "Library" from the Go menu (for Mountain Lion users hold the Option key to reveal the Library in this menu). Then go to the Preferences folder and remove the file called "com.apple.systemuiserver.plist." Then log out and back in to your system.

Do keep in mind that deleting the SystemUIServer preferences file will leave you with a default set of menu extras, so you will have to manually re-enable and rearrange them.

Finally, if a third-party menu extra is simply not compatible and despite being updated is still showing buggy behavior in OS X, then the best approach is to disable this program's menu extra or remove the program from the system. While menu extras are mostly intended to be quick-access options for program settings that can be enabled or disabled, some programs operate entirely through the menu extra or have one that is enabled at all times.

In addition, some programs use an older approach to programming menu extras and so they're treated slightly differently in the menu bar. These extras load after the default menu extras, and are usually appended to the left of the menu extras. A good way to identify these is to try moving them around the menu bar by holding the Command key and then clicking and dragging. If the modern approach to menu extras was used, then this action should allow you to move the menu extra around; if it's an older extra, it will stay put. (Granted, you can only apply this test when the menu bar is not currently hanging.)

This is often an easy way to identify third-party menu extras that may be the source of the problem, so you can then go about testing each by uninstalling, quitting, or otherwise disabling them to troubleshoot the menu hangs you are experiencing.

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6 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You

Photograph by AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

The planet keeps getting hotter, new data showed this week. Especially in America, where 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded, by far. Every few years, the U.S. federal government engages hundreds of experts to assess the impacts of climate change, now and in the future.

From agriculture (pictured) to infrastructure to how humans consume energy, the National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Committee spotlights how a warming world may bring widespread disruption.

Farmers will see declines in some crops, while others will reap increased yields.

Won't more atmospheric carbon mean longer growing seasons? Not quite. Over the next several decades, the yield of virtually every crop in California's fertile Central Valley, from corn to wheat to rice and cotton, will drop by up to 30 percent, researchers expect. (Read about "The Carbon Bathtub" in National Geographic magazine.)

Lackluster pollination, driven by declines in bees due partly to the changing climate, is one reason. Government scientists also expect the warmer climate to shorten the length of the frosting season necessary for many crops to grow in the spring.

Aside from yields, climate change will also affect food processing, storage, and transportation—industries that require an increasing amount of expensive water and energy as global demand rises—leading to higher food prices.

—Daniel Stone

Published January 16, 2013

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