Newspapers online. 07-31-2013 | ScienceTechn

This is a 10% increase on the figures for 2011, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Nearly 600 charges were brought between January and May 2013, the figures show.

The revelations come as police say they are investigating abusive tweets sent to MP Stella Creasy.

Under the Communications Act 2003, a person is guilty of an offence if they send "a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" by means of an electronic communications network.

But the CPS could not tell the BBC how many individuals these charges related to nor how many resulted in a successful prosecution.

A CPS spokesperson said: "We cannot disaggregate offences data centrally to indicate the number of people prosecuted or the outcome of the prosecution proceeding - it is often the case that a person is charged with more than one offence."

Reporting abuse

Ms Creasy received the abusive tweets after publicly backing feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who was also targeted by Twitter "trolls" following her campaign to have a woman featured on a UK banknote.

Both Ms Criado-Perez and Ms Creasy received rape and death threats via Twitter.

On Monday, Del Harvey, Twitter's senior director of trust and safety, blogged that the micro-messaging platform would extend the "report tweet" function, already available on its iPhone app, to Android phones and desktops.

But he did not give a timescale for the change.

Pressure has been building on Twitter to do more to combat abusive messages sent via the platform.

On Monday, Andy Trotter, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers' communications advisory group told BBC Radio 4's The World At One: "They need to take responsibility as do the other platforms to deal with this at source and make sure these things do not carry on.

"They need to make it easier for victims to report these matters and, from a police perspective, they need to know that they can report these things to us."

A Change.org petition calling for Twitter to add a "report abuse" button to its service had attracted more than 71,000 supporters on Tuesday morning.

But while Twitter's rules "explicitly bar direct, specific threats of violence against others", the company says "manually reviewing every Tweet is not possible due to Twitter's global reach and level of activity".

In the first full quarter under a new Chief Executive Michel Combes, the smaller competitor to Sweden's Ericsson and China's Huawei posted a quarterly sales rise of 1.9 percent to 3.61 billion euros ($4.78 billion).

Demand for so-called IP products, which help direct data traffic inside telecom networks, grew sharply and pushed up profits, supporting Combes' decision to put them at the center of his strategy to deliver a rebound that has eluded his successors.

But recovery at Alcatel-Lucent, which has lost more than $10 billion since it was created through a 2006 merger, will depend in part on whether telecom operators increase overall spending in the coming years to build superfast mobile broadband or if they trim budgets elsewhere to compensate.

Alcatel-Lucent will have to duke it out with its bigger competitors, including Nokia-Siemens Networks and Ericsson, for contract wins.

Adjusted operating profit was 46 million euros or 1.3 percent of revenues. Analysts had predicted losses.

Shares in Alcatel-Lucent were up 8.8 percent at 0748 GMT(3.48 a.m. ET)

Combes said he would seek three to five partnerships like the Qualcomm deal in a bid to increase Alcatel's R&D firepower. The U.S. chip maker will take a less than 5 percent stake, he said, and the pact is worth some 100 million euros in research funding.

"Other discussions are underway... we hope to make announcements on in the coming quarters," said Combes.

Despite investors' euphoria, the group's second-quarter results were marked by a net loss of 871 million euros caused by a writedown of its sub-scale wireless business.

And Alcatel-Lucent consumed more cash - 248 million euros - in its operations than it generated, a perennial problem for the group.

Alexandre Peterc, analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, said the quarterly results could lead to upgrades to consensus but cautioned that investors should avoid the risky stock.

"Alcatel shares remain extremely risky and volatile," said Peterc in a note. "Though Q2 is good, beating consensus, cash is still worsening faster than anticipated."

In June, Combes pledged to focus the group on high-growth products in IP networking and high-mobile and fixed broadband, while maximizing profits out of older products.

Negotiations between CBS and Time Warner Cable continued after midnight in New York, according to a spokeswoman for the cable operator. Time Warner said it had relented "at the request of CBS."

"There's progress being made and hopefully we don't go dark," CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told reporters on Monday night in Los Angeles.

"We still believe our content is worth a lot of money."

CBS, which is the No. 1 rated U.S. broadcast network with shows such as "The Big Bang Theory" and "N.C.I.S.," has never had a wide-scale blackout, it said.

A blackout would have blocked an estimated 3.5 million Time Warner cable subscribers in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Dallas from seeing shows like "Under the Dome" and "Big Brother." It would not affect CBS affiliate stations owned by other companies.

Initially, in a statement issued just after midnight, Time Warner said it would remove CBS and the company's cable channels, including the premium service Showtime. The action came after weeks of often contentious negotiations over increases in fees that CBS receives from cable and satellite operators.

"We offered to pay reasonable increases, but CBS's demands are out of line and unfair," Time Warner said in its initial statement. "They want Time Warner Cable to pay more than others pay for the same programming."

The threat of blackouts have become increasingly common as networks, which provide programming, square off against cable and satellite TV operators that pay retransmission fees to transmit programs into living rooms around the country.

Last summer, satellite operator DirecTV's 20 million customers were unable to receive Viacom's cable networks, including Nickelodeon and MTV, for 10 days after those companies failed to strike a new deal.

CBS's contract with Time Warner Cable expired in June, but the two sides have already extended the deadline twice. The two sides were agreeing hourly extensions as talks continue.

While the companies negotiated, they both ran TV commercials aimed at getting the public on their side.

Time Warner Cable's spot accused CBS of giving New York a "black eye", while CBS urged viewers to "say no to Time Warner Cable," and gave them Time Warner Cable's phone number.

Archaeologists working at the site in central England where Richard III's body was found underneath a parking lot are currently puzzling over a sealed lead coffin containing the remains of a yet-to-be-identified person. The lead coffin was found encased in a larger stone coffin.

The smaller coffin is intact "except for a hole at one end of the casket through which we could tantalizingly see someone's feet," said Mathew Morris, the fieldwork director at the site.

New discovery just as exciting

Last year, archaeologists unearthed a body buried beneath a nondescript parking lot in the city of Leicester. In February, they confirmed the body was that of Richard III, the last king of England to die on the battlefield. The news drew global attention and set off a debate over Richard's bloodthirsty reputation.

Archaeologists from the University of Leicester, who have been toiling away at the site this summer, say the discovery of the double coffin is just as exciting. They only uncovered the lead coffin last week after eight people hauled the heavy lid off the stone coffin. But figuring out who's inside looks set to be a much tougher task.

"This inner coffin is likely to contain a high-status burial, although we still don't know who it contains," Morris wrote in a blog post. "No writing was visible on the coffin lid but it does bear a crude cross soldered into the metal."

There are three main contenders for the identity of the coffin's inhabitant: a medieval knight named Sir William de Moton of Peckleton, and two leaders of the English Grey Friars order, Peter Swynsfeld and William of Nottingham.

Beneath the parking lot

The Leicester site is where a church, known as Grey Friars Friary, once stood. Over the centuries, the whereabouts of the friary's remnants were forgotten, but it remained in the records as the burial place of Richard III. Last year, experts began digging away at the area, which had taken on the less illustrious role of a parking lot. They went on to establish that it was part of the friary and that a skeleton, hastily buried in an uneven grave, was that of Richard.

The archaeologists who undertook a new dig this summer think the double coffin, located near Richard's grave, was buried during the 14th century, more than 100 years before Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

The activists said they were reassured after a meeting with the president, Attorney General Eric Holder and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez that the administration will fight any efforts to suppress minority voting even after the Supreme Court struck down part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

"It was ... very encouraging to see how much the Department of Justice is strategizing and positioning itself to be a real force combating racial discrimination," Barbara Arnwine, the president of the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, told reporters.

"They're thinking very strategically, and broadly, and they're looking at the full array of voting laws that they can use," she said.

Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League, said after the meeting that he was encouraged by the president's strong commitment to preserve voting rights for minorities.

National voter registration laws are one tool administration officials think they can use to combat state laws that they believe make it harder for minority voters to cast their ballots, Arnwine added.

Despite progress on civil rights over the last 50 years and Obama's election as the first African American president, race and access to voting remain contentious issues in U.S. politics, particularly in the South.

Civil rights groups were dismayed when the nation's highest court in June voided part of a law aimed at ensuring that minorities would not be unfairly prevented from voting.

Since minorities traditionally favor Democrats over Republicans, the debate has implications for the elections in 2014 when Republicans hope to extend their majority in the House of Representatives and reverse the thin majority Democrats hold in the Senate.

The activists said they plan to focus on state laws they consider discriminatory.

"All these states legislatures are passing all these bad laws, and they're obviously anticipating 2014," Arnwine said.

After the Supreme Court disappointment, civil rights groups were cheered by the Justice Department's announcement last week that it would ask a federal court for renewed power to block new election laws in Texas it says are discriminatory.

The long, cold spring meant there were very few reports before June.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) now says several species including the Lion's Mane are being reported in rapidly growing numbers.

This particular species has a powerful sting and scientists are advising people not to touch them.

For the past ten years the MCS has carried out a national jellyfish survey based on reports from members of the public. This year was extremely quiet until June, and scientists say that the reason was the poor winter weather.

"What seemed to happen was that we had the very cold spring," said Dr Peter Richardson, biodiversity programme manager with MCS.

"Normally we'd be receiving records from January onwards, this year we didn't have anything until May."

Bloom boom The warm weather in July has led to an influx of information from all parts of the UK.

"We are getting anecdotal reports of people saying well 'I've been to this beach in the southwest for many years and I've never seen so many jellyfish' - we do tend to get that each year," said Dr Richardson.

Earlier this month the Foreign Office updated its travel advice for Greece in the wake of large jellyfish blooms there, but scientists stress that there are different factors and different species here in the UK. In Britain, Blue and Compass jellyfish are very common in the South West of England. The Moon species is being found all around UK coastal waters, in large numbers in some places.

There are also growing numbers of Lion's Mane around North Wales and the North West of England. "They're our biggest jellyfish, they grow to about two metres wide and have metres of trailing tentacles, and they have very powerful stings, said Dr Richardson. "They actually feed on the Moon jellyfish, so you tend to get big blooms of Moon and then Lion's Mane after."

Stinging seas

The scientists say the public should be very careful in the way they approach this species. "We ask people to report what they see online and send us photos," said Dr Richardson. "But always look and don't touch, as they can sting and that could really spoil your day,"

There competing views about why jellyfish blooms are increasing. There is some evidence that pollution is driving up the number of algal blooms and depriving the seas of oxygen.

In these environments, shellfish and other species struggle to survive. But jellyfish do well.

The attack in the city of Dera Ismail Khan showed the ability of the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban to strike at the heart of Pakistan's heavily guarded prison system and walk away with dozens of senior Taliban fighters and commanders.

The overnight assault on the Central Prison took place despite reports that regional officials had received intelligence days, if not weeks, ago suggesting such an attack was imminent.

Officials blamed a combination of negligence and lack of communication among Pakistan's many security agencies, but some suggested there may have been a degree of insider help.

Just hours before the attack, army and police units had met at the jail to discuss security, one source said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

"It is very difficult to attack such a place without proper information or contacts," said the police source, adding that some prisoners were suspected to have been in touch with the Taliban by mobile phones provided by sympathetic wardens.

"They are corrupt, lazy and unprofessional. And the militants may have supporters in the city." Another senior official in the provincial capital of Peshawar said only about 70 of the 200 prison guards who were meant to be on duty were present that night.

"Most policemen ran for their lives once the attack started, leaving their weapons behind," the official told Reuters. "They could have easily killed some of the attackers but they even gave up their own guns, providing the attackers with more ammo."

The attack came a year after a similar mass jailbreak in the northern town of Bannu which Taliban militants said was carried out with inside help from prison guards. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been.

His goal, to be outlined in a speech at an Amazon.com Inc facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is to break through congressional gridlock by trying to find a formula that satisfies both Republicans and Democrats.

Efforts to reach a bipartisan "grand bargain" on deficit reduction have been at an impasse for months. Senior administration officials say Obama is not giving up on a big deficit-cutting package, but given that no agreement appears on the horizon so far, he is offering a new idea to try to follow through on his 2012 re-election campaign promises to help the middle class.

"As part of his efforts to focus Washington on the middle class, today in Tennessee the president will call on Washington to work on a grand bargain focused on middle-class jobs by pairing reform of the business tax code with a significant investment in middle-class jobs," Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said.

Obama wants to cut the corporate tax rate of 35 percent down to 28 percent and give manufacturers a preferred rate of 25 percent. He also wants a minimum tax on foreign earnings as a tool against corporate tax evasion and increased use of tax havens.

The new twist is that in exchange for his support for a corporate tax reduction, he wants money generated by the tax overhaul to be used on a mix of proposals such as funding infrastructure projects like repairing roads and bridges, improving education at community colleges, and promoting manufacturing, senior administration officials said.

Obama's proposal would generate a one-time source of revenue, for example, by reforming depreciation or putting a fee on accumulated foreign earnings.

Officials gave no specific figure on how much money would be raised. But Obama in his State of the Union speech in February called for $50 billion for infrastructure spending.

The White House is hopeful that the idea will gain some traction in the U.S. Congress because Republicans want corporate tax reform and Democrats want spending for infrastructure. This offers something for both sides, administration officials said.

Officials said they recognize, however, that the climate is difficult in Congress with Republicans adamantly refusing anything that is seen as increasing spending and Democrats in no mood to cut taxes and get nothing for it.