08-28-2013 ScienceTechnology New York Time

The newspaper and social network were hit after their domain name details were maliciously edited by hackers.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, says it carried out the attack.

It is the most severe attack so far carried out by the group.

In recent months, the hackers have targeted major media companies including the Financial Times, Washington Post, CNN and BBC.

But in this latest attack, the SEA was able to cause more sustained damage with a technique which also saw news and comment site the Huffington Post hit.

The attacked domains were managed by hosting company Melbourne IT, which has said it is looking at "additional layers of security" for protecting domain details.

DNS changes

The attack focused on editing DNS - Domain Name System - information.

The DNS is used to direct web traffic to a specific server containing the website a user wants to visit.

In simple terms, it means we can browse the web using easy-to-remember addresses like bbc.com, rather than by IP addresses - a string of numbers separated by dots. The SEA was able to gain access to Melbourne IT's system, where Twitter and the New York Times registered their respective domains.

It meant that the hackers could change DNS details so that instead of, for example, "nytimes.com" taking you to the Times' servers, the domain was instead pointed to a website hosted by the SEA.

In Twitter's case, the SEA targeted twimg.com - a separate domain that the social network used to store image data, as well as styling code.

While Twitter itself remained active, the disruption to twimg.com meant many pages displayed incorrectly.

In a statement, Twitter said that no user data had been affected.

The SEA used its Twitter account to publicise the attacks on both sites, posting images of its work.

"Hi @Twitter," the group said in one tweet, "look at your domain, its owned by #SEA "

'Through the front door'

Melbourne IT blamed the breach on a reseller - a third party that sells domains through the company's system.

Melbourne IT said the reseller's log-in credentials had been obtained, and that with them the SEA could enter through the "front door" and carry out the attack. "If you've got a valid user name and password," chief executive Theo Hnarakis told ABC (Australia), "the assumption from our systems is that you are the authorised owner and user of that domain name."

Many analysts and investors have called for Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) to enter into the low-end smartphone market to lure in customers in China and other emerging markets. But the rumored iPhone 5C likely won't be cheaper for consumers; it will, however, be cheaper to manufacture.

According to the latest images leaked to tech blog Sonny Dickson, the iPhone 5C is a plastic-shelled, colorful version of today's iPhone 5. Why plastic? The casing of the iPhone 5C could reduce manufacturing costs by $17 dollars per phone, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu -- no small amount when Apple is selling tens of millions of iPhones each quarter.

When Apple releases a new iPhone, the company's current strategy is to knock $100 off the price of its year-old iPhone and continue selling it as a "mid-tier" option. The two-year old iPhone remains on store shelves too with a $200 price cut. Related story: Selling your old iPhone? Do it now

That strategy has become a problem for Apple: Older iPhones are an incredibly popular option among consumers, but the bill of materials on those devices is still exceedingly high. The year-old iPhone 5 and two-year old iPhone 4S comprised just less than half of iPhone sales in the United States in 2013, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Gross margins have tumbled over the past year as a result.

The iPhone has never been a particularly cheap device to manufacture, but last year's iPhone 5 was the most expensive, resource-intensive device to produce yet. That's why it makes sense for Apple to take the iPhone 5 completely off store shelves when it unveils the new flagship iPhone 5S (or whatever it will be called). The iPhone 5C can slip in as the No. 2 phone in Apple's product hierarchy.

It's the best way to maximize profit margins without cutting into Apple's core, high-end market -- it would be foolish for Apple to cut corners on its best-selling, premium iPhone.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

But plastic doesn't have to mean "low-end." Plastic can actually add functionality and even fun. Plastic backs can endure more drops and hide more scratches than their glass and metal-clad peers. Colors can represent a form of personal expression for smartphone users who view their phones as extensions of themselves. It's why people loved the early iMacs, and colorful iPods.

That’s what is envisaged in a study by Andrew Barnard and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University. They have revisited an idea nearly one hundred years old, and sounding decidedly steampunk: the thermophone or thermoacoustic loudspeaker, in which sound is generated by the effect of a material rapidly oscillating between hot and cold. In 1917 Harold Arnold and IB Crandall of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Western Electric Company showed that they could create sound by simultaneously passing alternating and direct currents through a very thin platinum foil. This heats up the foil, and the heat is conducted into the air surrounding it in pulses paced by the frequency of the AC current.

Sound waves are created by oscillations in air pressure, and an ordinary loudspeaker generates these via a mechanical vibration of a membrane. But air pressure is also altered when the air gets hotter or cooler. So the thermal oscillations of Arnold and Crandall’s platinum film also generated a sound wave – without any of the cumbersome, heavy electromagnets used to excite vibrations in conventional speakers, or indeed without moving parts at all.

The problem was that the sound wasn’t very loud, however, and the frequency response wasn’t up to reproducing speech. So the idea was shelved for almost a century.

Prime Minister David Cameron did not specify what that action would be or whether the resolution would explicitly lay out military intervention, but the British leader was scheduled to meet with his national security advisors Wednesday to discuss military options that could include airstrikes on Syrian defense assets.

“We’ve always said we want the U.N. Security Council to live up to its responsibilities on Syria,” Cameron said. “Today they have an opportunity to do that.”

He said that the resolution would condemn the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons and authorize “necessary measures for protecting civilians.”

On Tuesday, Cameron announced that he was recalling British lawmakers from their summer recess to debate intervention in Syria. Members of Parliament have demanded that his government clearly state the legal basis for such intervention.

Cameron’s intention to put a resolution before the Security Council signaled a desire to have U.N. backing for a military strike on Syria. But his foreign secretary, William Hague, has said that intervention could be in accord with international law yet still not have an explicit mandate from the U.N.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the special envoy to Syria at the United Nations, said Wednesday that international law clearly demanded U.N. sanction for any military intervention.

“President Obama and the American administration are not known for being trigger-happy. What they will decide I don’t know, but certainly international law is very clear. The Security Council has to be brought in,” Brahimi told reporters in Geneva.

[Updated, 4:16 a.m. PDT, Aug. 28: Brahimi said it is likely a chemical "substance" was used in an attack last week on a Damascus suburb.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources.

Nevertheless, Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said the department remains "on track to open" the marketplaces on time on October 1.

The reason for the hold-up was unclear. Sources attributed it to technology problems involving the display of insurance products within the federal information technology system.

Peters said only that the government was responding to "feedback" from the companies, "providing additional flexibility and time to handle technical requests."

Coming at a time when state and federal officials are still working to overcome challenges to the information technology systems necessary to make the exchanges work, some experts say that even a small delay could jeopardize the start of the six-month open enrollment period.

U.S. officials have said repeatedly that the marketplaces, which are the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, would begin on time.

But the October 1 deadline has already begun to falter at the state level, with Oregon announcing plans to scale back the launch of its own marketplace and California saying it would consider a similar move.

Tuesday's notification by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the HHS agency spearheading marketplace development, affects insurance plans that would be sold in federal exchanges that the administration is setting up in 34 of the 50 U.S. states. The remaining 16 states, including Oregon and California, are setting up their own marketplaces.

"It makes me wonder if open enrollment can start on October 1," said a former administration official who worked to implement Obama's healthcare reform.

"But having everything ready on October 1 is not a critical issue. What matters to people is January 1, which is when the coverage is supposed to start. If that were delayed, it would be a substantive setback."

Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expected to extend federally subsidized health coverage to an estimated 7 million uninsured Americans in 2014 through the marketplaces.

The plans could be introduced as early as September and face tough odds in a Congress where disputes over nearly every tax and spending issue threaten a crisis.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and Republican Representative Dave Camp, head of the House Committee on Ways and Means, are crafting separate proposals to scrub the tax code of clutter and lower tax rates.

It is the most ambitious congressional effort in a generation, with Camp likely to move first.

The duo are considering trimming a slew of tax deductions and other breaks to offset the cost of cutting the top corporate and individual rates to as low as 25 percent, say aides and others. The corporate rate now tops out at 35 percent, while the highest individual rate is about 40 percent.

Baucus and Camp found the most common ground in potential corporate tax code revisions while working together on the congressional "supercommittee," a group of lawmakers who tried but failed to forge a debt deal in 2011.

"There were a lot of areas of agreement when they delved into the code," said a senior legislative aide involved in the supercommittee effort.

For example, both are open to tightening depreciation rules that govern how quickly companies can write off the cost of certain assets, and limiting a widely used manufacturing tax break known as the domestic activities deduction, said the aide, who worked for the panel.

Camp is the top tax-writer in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Baucus leads the tax-writing Finance Committee in the Senate, where Democrats hold power.

The tax code has not been completely cleaned up since 1986 when a politically divided Congress forged a deal with Republican President Ronald Reagan.

It will be a heavy lift, but one sure to cause heartburn for those in the corporate world now enjoying the breaks under fire.

Baucus and Camp aim to enact legislation by the end of 2014.

Party leaders worry that forcing members to vote on legislation with tough choices on popular tax breaks may be futile, given a belief among many that Democrats and Republicans will not in the end come together on perhaps the most contentious issue - added revenue.

With weak and untested military forces unable to project power in the Middle East, China can only play a low-key role in a region that is crucial for its energy security.

As the United States and its allies gear up for a probable military strike on Syria, raising fears of a regional conflagration, China remains firmly on the sidelines, despite it having much more at stake than some other big powers.

The Middle East is China's largest source of crude oil. Without it, the world's second-largest economy would shudder to a halt. In the first seven months of this year, China imported about 83 million metric tons (91.49 million tons) of crude from the region, half its total, with top suppliers including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

China has few economic interests in Syria itself but believes it has a strategic and diplomatic imperative to ensure Middle East stability and to protect a vital energy source.

Retired Major General Luo Yuan, one of China's most outspoken military figures, told the official People's Daily last year that with so much oil at stake "we cannot think that the issues of Syria and Iran have nothing to do with us".

China insists it is neither backing nor protecting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying it only vetoed U.N. resolutions it thought would worsen the crisis. Beijing has also hosted both government and opposition officials in an attempt to find a political solution, albeit with few results.

Even if the government were to go against its principle of not interfering in the affairs of other countries, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is still far from capable of all but the most token presence in lands far from home.

"In terms of the PLA becoming actively involved, doing things the United States and its allies plan to do in the next few days, it does not at the moment have the wherewithal to do that," said Ross Babbage, a military analyst in Canberra and a former senior Australian defense official.

China's military, despite making rapid progress in stealth fighter technology and launching its first aircraft carrier, is largely untested. It last fought a war in 1979, against Vietnam, which did not go well for the ill-prepared Chinese.

Long-lived bacteria, reproducing only once every 10,000 years, have been found in rocks 2.5km (1.5 miles) below the ocean floor that are as much as 100 million years old.

Viruses and fungi have also been found.

The discoveries raise questions about how life persists in such extreme conditions.

Scientists from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program have announced the findings at the Goldschmidt conference, a meeting of more than 4,000 geochemists, in Florence, Italy.

Fumio Inagaki of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reported that the microbes exist in very low concentrations, of around 1,000 microbes in every tea spoon full of rock, compared with billions or trillions of bacteria that would typically be found in the same amount of soil at Earth's surface.

Outnumbered

Alongside the simple single-celled organisms (prokaryotes) found in the deep rocks, Tom Englehardt of the University of Oldenburg, Germany, showed that viruses are even more abundant, outnumbering microbes by more than 10 to one, with that ratio increasing with depth.

Speaking to BBC News, Dr Englehardt said of these viruses: "They are quite stable in these sediments, especially as the metabolic rates of the cells are so low, and they exist in sediments up to 100 million years old."

The number of microbes was so low that the distances between them were much greater than those of communities at Earth's surface, so the scientists were surprised to find that they could support a virus' life cycle.

"We're pushing the boundaries of what we understand about how viruses cycle on Earth elsewhere, by studying them in the deep biosphere" Dr Beth Orcutt of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, US, told BBC News.

Dr Orcutt continued: "One of the biggest mysteries of life below the sea floor is that although there are microbes down there it's really hard to understand how they have enough energy to live and how incredibly slowly they are growing.

"The deeper we look, the deeper we are still finding cells, and the discussion now is where is the limit? Is it going to be depth, is it going to be temperature? Where is the limit from there being life to there being no life?"

Alive, or just un-dead?

The long-lived bacteria metabolise at such a slow rate that some even question whether this constitutes life at all.