Tomorrow's Online Headline News 12-02-2013 |

Early on Sunday the spacecraft fired its main engine for more than 20 minutes, giving it the correct velocity to leave Earth's orbit.

It will now cruise for 680m km (422m miles), setting up an encounter with its target on 24 September 2014.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, is designed to demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit.

But the $72m (£45m) probe will also carry out experiments, including a search for methane gas in the planet's atmosphere.

MOM tweeted: "Earth orbiting phase of the #Mangalyaan ended and now is on a course to encounter Mars after a journey of about 10 months around the Sun."

The head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) K Radhakrishnan said the operation to leave orbit had passed off well.

Since launch on 5 November, the craft has progressively raised its orbit around Earth with a series of engine burns.

The manoeuvres were all successful apart from the fourth, carried out on 11 November, during which a problem with the liquid fuel thruster caused the MOM to fall short of the mark.

But Isro has made plans for the eventuality that changes need to be made to the 1,350kg spacecraft's course. "We have planned right now four mid-course corrections; first one will be around December 11 - plus or minus a couple of days depending on the deviation," the NDTV news channel reported V Koteswara Rao, Isro's scientific secretary, as saying.

On Earth, the majority of atmospheric methane (CH4) is produced by living organisms. The gas has previously been detected in Mars's atmosphere by orbiting spacecraft and by telescopes on Earth.

But Nasa's rover Curiosity recently failed to find the gas in its atmospheric measurements.

If the MOM can detect methane, one possible source could be Martian microbes, perhaps living deep beneath the surface. But CH4 can also be produced by geological processes, including volcanism.

India's PSLV rocket - the second choice for the mission after a beefier launcher failed - was not powerful enough to send the MOM on a direct flight to Mars.

The Chang'e-3 mission is set to blast off from Xichang in the south at 01:30 local time (17:30 GMT).

The Long March rocket's payload includes a landing module and a six-wheeled robotic rover called Yutu (or Jade Rabbit).

The mission should land in the Moon's northern hemisphere in mid-December.

"The news channel will begin live coverage tonight at midnight... Spread the word!" state broadcaster CCTV said on its official account on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

This will be the third rover mission to land on the lunar surface, but the Chinese vehicle carries a more sophisticated payload, including ground-penetrating radar which will gather measurements of the lunar soil and crust.

The 120kg (260lb) Jade Rabbit rover can climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200m (660ft) per hour, according to its designer the Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute. Its name - chosen in an online poll of 3.4 million voters - derives from an ancient Chinese myth about a rabbit living on the moon as the pet of the lunar goddess Chang'e.

Last week, Prof Ouyang Ziyuan told the BBC's science editor David Shukman that the mission would test key technology and carry out science, adding: "In terms of the talents, China needs its own intellectual team who can explore the whole lunar and solar system - that is also our main purpose."

The lander's target is Sinus Iridum (Latin for Bay of Rainbows) a flat volcanic plain thought to be relatively clear of large rocks. It is part of a larger feature known as Mare Imbrium that forms the right eye of the "Man in the Moon".

Other details of the mission are sketchy; the rover and lander are powered by solar panels but other sources suggest they also carry radioisotope heating units (RHUs) containing plutonium-238 to keep them warm during the cold lunar night. The US Apollo astronauts Eugene Cernan and "Buzz" Aldrin have also remarked in a recent article that the landing module is substantially bigger than it needs to be to carry the rover, suggesting that it could be precursor technology to a human landing.

Only a few "narrow windows" of time are available for the launch over the coming days, some lasting only a few minutes, mission spokesman Pei Zhaoyu told the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been under pressure to find an alternative plan for the destruction of Syria's poison gas arsenal after Albania backed out of hosting the work.

The OPCW said 35 firms had expressed an interest in bidding for commercial contracts by Friday's deadline for the treatment of about 800 tonnes (1 tonne = 1.102 metric tons) of bulk industrial chemicals that are safe to destroy in commercial incinerators.

But another 500 tonnes of chemicals, including nerve agents, are seen as too dangerous to import into a country or process commercially, and will be treated offshore on the U.S. ship.

The OPCW said the operation would be carried out on a U.S. vessel at sea using hydrolysis, adding a naval vessel was undergoing modifications to support the operations.

"The United States has offered to contribute a destruction technology, full operational support and financing to neutralize Syria's priority chemicals," an OPCW statement said.

The Hague-based organisation, which won the Nobel Peace prize last month, has been given the task of overseeing destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stocks under an agreement which averted U.S. missile strikes.

It followed a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus in August which killed hundreds of people.

Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint UN-OPCW Syria team, said on Saturday the mission faced a challenge to get the most lethal chemical agents out of Syria by the end of the year target, in the midst of a civil war which has killed 100,000 people.

"But we are working to make sure we can meet all the deadlines," she told reporters in Damascus at the end of a week of talks with Syrian officials.

She said the chemicals, located at various sites across Syria, would be packed, sealed and transported to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

The flat display shows your caller's upper body, talking away. But below this their hands and arms reach up out of the tabletop into the physical world, gently lifting a small red ball off the table and passing it from one digitally-recreated hand to the other. It can already happen.

It's the work of the inFORM Dynamic Shape Display: a tabletop covered in miniature white squares that rise up like towers, to turn digital content into physical objects. Used in conjunction with a 3D sensor, like Microsoft's Kinect, it can capture a person's physical appearance and reproduce it in tiny skyscraper-like "pixel" blocks -- on-the-fly, anywhere in the world.

Essentially it's very similar to those kind of pin toys that you might know from museum novelty stores," explains MIT's Daniel Leithinger, part of the Tangible Media Group behind the inFORM.

Similar -- yes -- just a lot more impressive. To add color to the block shapes, a projector on the ceiling beams down light, turning the towers psychedelic hues as Leithinger demonstrates the table's capabilities.

It also has a deeper purpose -- communicating an extra layer of information from the sender to the receiver on the other end: "When you move your hands, not only do you have the shape of the hands, but you also see the color, the texture of the hands," says Leithinger.

Leithinger shows off a couple of the table's party tricks: sculpting a model car from the blocks, coloring it in, and video-chatting about it with a colleague -- allowing them both to get hands-on with the model, regardless of physical distance.

The display doubles as an active controller, allowing a user to interact with 3D menus constructed by the table by moving the little red ball. "It's not real 3D because we can only push up and down each one of these pins," says Leithinger. "We can't push them sideways or have any other control over them at the moment -- we usually call this affect '2.5D'"

Even so, the inFORM's remarkable capabilities seem to given some users big ideas. "A lot of comments we get are like -- 'Oh, it's like a super power'," he laughs. They say it feels like being X-Men nemesis Magneto, he explains -- suddenly having the power to manipulate the world at a distance, just with a wave of your hand. For Leithinger, his ambitions are a little more down to earth.

Merrill E. Newman, an 85-year old former special forces officer, is in good health, his family said in a statement after getting an update on his condition from Swedish diplomats who had visited him in the North Korean capital over the weekend.

"He has received the medications that we sent him and medical personnel are checking on his health several times a day. Merrill reports that he is being well treated and that the food is good," the family said. Sweden's North Korean embassy gives consular help to the United States, which has no mission there.

The family, based in California, called on North Korea to release Newman, who has a heart rhythm disorder, as an act of compassion, taking into account his health and his age.

"All of us want this ordeal to end and for the 85 year-old head of our extended family to be with us once more."

Swedish embassy officials were granted access on Saturday to visit Newman, the U.S. State Department said, the first access by Western officials to him since his arrest.

Newman was detained at the end of a trip to communist North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The DPRK has no diplomatic relations with the United States which fought alongside South Korea in the 1950-53 war.

"Given Mr. Newman's advanced age and health conditions, we urge the DPRK to release Mr. Newman so he may return home and reunite with his family," a State Department official said in a statement.

The White House also urged Newman's release in a brief statement.

On Saturday, North Korea showcased Newman as a criminal, showing a video of him making a full confession and apology as if the battles of the Korean War were still raging.

The state KCNA news agency said Newman had been a mastermind of clandestine operations and confessed to being "guilty of a long list of indelible crimes against DPRK government and Korean people".

'BEG FOR PARDON'

In the patchy video, Newman appears composed and is shown reading aloud from a handwritten statement dated November 9, 2013, in a wood-paneled meeting room. At the end, he bows and places a fingerprint on the document.

Your chest expands in response, your lungs fill with air and then you sneeze everywhere. You actually sneeze around 5,000 droplets of mucus and air at speeds of up to 100mph (160kph).

Your eyelids shut down as part of that reaction, but it's one of science’s big mysteries as to why. We think it is an involuntary response, a reflex, like when your leg jerks after being tapped on the knee.

What could be causing it? You may shut your eyelids so that when you sneeze out germs they don’t fall on your eyes. Or maybe your eyes shut because they are one of a series of muscles that tighten during that involuntary response.

After 20 years of Republican leadership, not only will America's largest city have the most liberal mayor in a generation, helping him implement change will be a progressive-leaning City Council and a longtime liberal ally in the new public advocate.

The city was governed for the last 12 years by Michael Bloomberg, a political independent who was first elected as a Republican, and for eight years before that by Republican Rudolph Giuliani.

To observers as well as Democratic legislators, the last election marked a major change in New York City politics, with a new breed of highly liberal politicians ready to enact a series of progressive policies that would have been dead on arrival under Bloomberg or his predecessor Giuliani.

"It's seen as an opportunity by progressives to do something different," said Douglas Muzzio, an expert on New York City politics and a professor at Baruch College at the City University of New York. "People projected their frustration, their anxiety, their expectations, their dreams on Bill. In that sense it wasn't dissimilar from the 2008 election of Obama. Now he's got to deliver."

Pledging to address the gap between the rich and poor that grew wider as the city prospered while those at the bottom of the economic ladder struggled to pay for basic services such as housing and mass transit, de Blasio won a resounding victory in November with more than 70 percent of the vote.

Over the last decade, apartment rents in New York City increased about 44 percent and the cost of a monthly subway card rose by 60 percent.

De Blasio has vowed to set a new tone at City Hall, and his agenda includes reforming police tactics, offering universal access to early childhood education, expanding the city's paid sick leave rules and improving the living standard for the 46 percent of New Yorkers at or below the poverty line.

Firefighters and emergency rescuers swarmed the scene near Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx, where at least two train cars had flipped on their sides. One car was just feet away from the Harlem River.

Three of the dead were thrown "as the train came off the track and was twisting and turning," New York Fire Department Chief Edward Kilduff told reporters. Police divers were in the water hours after the crash searching for survivors, and cadaver dogs combed the wreckage. Authorities believe all the passengers have been accounted for, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters.

It was unclear how fast the train was traveling and how many passengers were on board.

At least 67 people were injured, New York Police Chief Ray Kelly told reporters. "In terms of causes, we don't know exactly what happened," Cuomo said.

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were headed to the scene, he said. Cuomo said 11 people were critically injured.

The train had been traveling from the Hudson Valley town of Poughkeepsie, 100 miles north of New York, to New York's Grand Central Station.

It came off the tracks just as it was coming around a sharp curve shortly after 7 a.m., fire officials told CNN affiliate WCBS. Of eight train cars, seven were off the tracks.

The train operator -- who is among the injured -- told investigators he applied brakes to the train, but it didn't slow down, a law enforcement official on the scene and familiar with the investigation said.

Passenger Frank Tatulli told WABC he thought the train was traveling "a lot faster" than usual. He escaped a derailed car on his own and suffered head and neck injuries, he said. Other passengers were still on the train, he told WABC.

The derailment occurred near where a freight train derailed in July, WCBS reported. No one was injured in that accident.

Federal authorities are still investigating a collision that occurred on the same line in May, when two passenger trains crashed during rush hour in Connecticut. Service was suspended Sunday on part of the Hudson Line, Metro-North said on Twitter.

Except that this year, there aren't any, exactly. Instead of marking down prices on Macs or iPads, Apple is giving out Apple Store gift cards to purchasers of various products. The cards are worth an estimated 10-15% of the price for certain Apple devices, and more for accessories.

Online and in its North American retail stores, Apple was offering gift cards of up to $150 for the purchase of a Mac, up to $75 for an iPad and up to $50 for an iPod. No gift cards were being offered for iPhones or the new iPad Mini, which went on sale earlier this month.

In its European stores, Apple was offering modest discounts on products instead of gift cards. Online sales in the United States began after midnight Pacific time on Friday. Many brick-and-mortar Apple Stores opened at 6 a.m.

Some of Apple's competitors are sticking with more traditional Black Friday discounts. A number of items at the Microsoft Store are on sale, and the Sony Store also has a number of Black Friday deals.

Fans camped overnight for a chance to get their hands on one of the consoles.

The first-come first-served launch was considered one of the only ways for people to get hold of a console before Christmas.

Amazon said customers who had not pre-ordered before 13 November would not receive a console in time for Christmas.

The PlayStation 4 was released in the UK a week after Microsoft's Xbox One which sold a million units in the first 24 hours worldwide.

The launches are seen as a fight for dominance in the key Christmas season says the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Imran Choudhary was the first in the queue outside the venue in Covent Garden, London.

"It was always my goal to try and be one of the first people in the country to get hold of a PS4," he said.

Online scams The chief executive of Sony's computer entertainment division, Andrew House, said: "We are trying to create a much more social and connected feeling. The whole goal of PlayStation 4 is to connect people via play, in a way that they maybe have not had before."

Customers who had placed online pre-orders with Amazon before 6 August were given the option of receiving their console on release day.

Anyone ordering after 14 November will have to wait until after Christmas for delivery, the company said.

The console was sold out on Game's website and only people who had paid a deposit when pre-ordering were guaranteed to receive a console before Christmas. Customers have been warned to be careful of online scams involving consoles. NetNames, a company which advises brands on protecting their online reputation, said it had seen an increase in marketplace websites offering cheap consoles, sometimes in countries where they have not yet been launched.

"To avoid falling victim to the latest online scams, consumers need to remember that if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is," said NetNames product director of brand protection, Haydn Simpson.

Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 have suffered problems after their launches in the US and worldwide.

Users of the Xbox One reported that the console's disc drive made a loud noise when they tried to insert a disc and in some cases couldn't read discs at all. Microsoft responded by offering a replacement console and a free game download to anyone affected by the problem.

The giant ball of ice and dust was initially declared dead when it failed to re-emerge from behind the star with the expected brightness.

All that could be seen was a dull smudge in space telescope images - its nucleus and tail assumed destroyed.

But recent pictures have indicated a brightening of what may be a small fragment of the comet.

Astronomers admit to being surprised and delighted, but now caution that anything could happen in the coming hours and days.

This remnant of Ison could continue to brighten, or it could simply fizzle out altogether.

"We've been following this comet for a year now and all the way it has been surprising us and confusing us," said astrophysicist Karl Battams, who operates the US space agency-funded Sungrazing Comets Project.

"It's just typical that right at the end, when we said, 'yes, it has faded out, it's died, we've lost it in the Sun', that a couple of hours later it should pop right back up again," he told BBC News.

The European Space Agency (Esa), too, which had been among the first organisations to call the death of Ison, has had to re-assess the situation. A small part of the nucleus may be intact, its experts say. How much of the once 2km-wide hunk of dirty ice could have survived is impossible to say.

Passing just 1.2 million km above the surface of the Sun would have severely disrupted Ison. Its ices would have vaporized rapidly in temperatures over 2,000C. And the immense gravity of the star would also have pulled and squeezed on the object as it tumbled end over end.

Karl Battams said: "We would like people to give us a couple of days, just to look at more images as they come from the spacecraft, and that will allow us to assess the brightness of the object that we're seeing now, and how that brightness changes.

"That will give us an idea of maybe what the object is composed of and what it might do in the coming days and weeks."

Whatever happens next, comets are going to be a big feature in the news over the next year.

The zone covers territory claimed by China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

China said last week that all