Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.

This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then driving to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with at least two handguns and at least one semi-automatic rifle.

There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot and killed 20 children, who President Obama later described as between five and 10 years of age. Six adults were also killed at the school. Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home.

A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."

Family friends in Newtown also described the young man as troubled and described Nancy as rigid. "[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said Barbara Frey, who also said he was "a little bit different ... Kind of repressed."

State and federal authorities believe his mother may have once worked at the elementary school where Adam went on his deadly rampage, although she was not a teacher, according to relatives, perhaps a volunteer.

Nancy and her husband Peter, Adam's father, divorced in 2009. When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."

Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.

Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.

"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.

Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.

Investigators are looking into whether Adam Lanza was carrying his older brother Ryan's identification at the time of the shooting, which may have caused the confusion. Neither Adam nor Ryan has any known criminal history.

Numerous relatives of the Lanzas in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, as well as multiple friends, are being interviewed by the FBI in an effort to put together a better picture of the gunman and any explanation for today's tragedy.

"I think the most important thing to point out with this kind of individual is that he did not snap this morning and decide to act out violently," said former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole. "These acts involve planning and thoughtfulness and strategizing in order to put the plan together so what may appear to be snap behavior is not that at all."

With reporting by Pierre Thomas, Jim Avila, Santina Leuci, Aaron Katersky, Matthew Mosk, Jason Ryan and Jay Shaylor

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Today on New Scientist: 13 December 2012

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UK government urged to consider relaxing drug rules

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Unemployment low, job vacancies remain up in Q3: MOM

SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said employment growth stayed high despite a rise in layoffs in the third quarter of this year.

In a statement, MOM noted that job openings rose in the quarter, resulting in a rise in job vacancies to job seekers ratio.

Meanwhile, the increase in layoffs remained substantially below recessionary highs.

Total employment grew by 26,200 in the third quarter of 2012, moderating from the growth of 31,900 in the same period last year, and 31,700 in the second quarter of 2012.

In the first nine months of 2012, total employment grew by 85,100 -- just slightly more than the increase of 85,000 in the same period last year.

The Ministry said unemployment rates have remained low, reflecting high manpower demand amid the tightening in foreign manpower controls.

- CNA/xq

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Yahoo considering purchase of news summarizing app Summly

Nick D'Aloisio, founder of Summly, speaks to the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts about his application that transforms the way people consume the news on mobile phones.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is looking at buying Summly, an app created by boy genius Nick D'Aloisio to summarize news articles, according to a report from All Things D.

Mayer met with the teenage D'Aloisio in recent weeks, unnamed sources told All Things D. The app uses an algorithm to pull out relevant information from news articles and turns them into neat paragraphs that fit on an iPhone screen, while also linking to the full article.

CNET has contacted both Yahoo and Summly for comment, and we'll update if we hear back.

Summly would be an attractive buy for Yahoo, as Mayer revs up her search for apps to bolster the company's presence in the mobile. Mayer expressed during a quarterly earnings call that "a focused, coherent mobile strategy," is the company's top priority. The company boasted more than 500,000 downloads in its first month. If Yahoo did buy Summly, it would be the company's third acquisition since Mayer took over this past July.

Yahoo acquired Stamped, a recommendations engine app, in late October, and mobile video-chat startup OnTheAir earlier this month.

The technology behind Summly, started out as an app called Trimit, which summarized the information in Web pages. D'Aloisio created it as a tool to help him comb through the vast amount of information he needed to review for his school work. Soon Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, founder and chairman of of Horizon Ventures, invested $250,000 in D'Aloisio's company and Trimit was renamed as Summly. On Halloween, Summly relaunched as a news summarizing app.

Coincidentally, this news comes as D'Aloisio celebrates the first anniversary of Summly's first launch.

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Global Checkup: Most People Living Longer, But Sicker

If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.

The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.

It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).

First, the good news:

We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.

Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.

Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.

Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.

We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.

And the bad:

Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.

Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.

We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.

To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.

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Health-Exchange Deadline Looms

All of the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," doesn't go into effect until 2014, but states are required to set up their own health care exchanges or leave it to the federal government to step in by next year. The deadline for the governors' decisions is Friday.

The health insurance exchanges are one of the key stipulations of the new health care law. They will offer consumers an Internet-based marketplace for purchasing private health insurance plans.

But the president's signature health care plan has become so fraught with politics that whether governors agreed to set up the exchanges has fallen mostly along party lines.

Such partisanship is largely symbolic because if a state opts not to set up the exchange, the Department of Health and Human Services will do it for them as part of the federal program. That would not likely be well-received by Republican governors, either, but the law forces each state's chief executive to make a decision one way or the other.

Here's what it looks like in all 50 states and the District of Columbia:

20 states that have opted out -- N.J., S.C., La., Wis., Ohio, Maine, Ala., Alaska, Ariz., Ga., Pa., Kan., Neb., N.H., N.D., Okla., S.D., Tenn., Texas and Wyo.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

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Several Republican governors have said they will not set up the exchanges, including Chris Christie (N.J.), Nikki Haley (S.C.), Bobby Jindal (La.), Scott Walker (Wis.), John Kasich (Ohio), Paul LePage (Maine), Robert Bentley (Ala.), Sean Parnell (Ark.), Jan Brewer (Ariz.), Nathan Deal (Ga.), Tom Corbett (Pa.), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Dave Heineman (Neb.), John Lynch (N.H.), Jack Dalrymple (N.D.), Mary Fallin (Okla.), Dennis Daugaard (S.D.), Bill Haslam (Tenn.), Rick Perry (Texas), and Matt Mead (Wyo.).

3 States Out, but a Little More Complicated -- Mont., Ind. and Mo.

The Montana outgoing and incoming governors are both Democrats, but the Republican state legislature rejected the Democratic state auditor's request to start setting up a state exchange. So a federal exchange will be set up in Montana as well.

The Indiana outgoing and incoming governors are both Republicans and outgoing Gov. Mitch Daniels deferred the decision to governor-elect and U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, who said his preference is not to set up a state health care exchange, paving the way for the feds to come in too.

In Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon is a Democrat, but Prop E passed on Nov. 6, which barred his administration from creating a state-based exchange without a public vote or the approval of the state legislature. After the election, he sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services saying he would be unable to set up a state-based exchange, meaning the federal government would have to set up its own.

1 State Waiting for the White House -- Utah

Utah already has a state exchange set up, a Web-based tool where small-business employees can shop and compare health insurance with contributions from their employee. In a letter Republican Gov. Gary Herbert sent to the White House Tuesday, he asked for its exchange, called Avenue H, to be approved as a state-based exchange under the Affordable Care Act as long as state officials can open it to individuals and larger businesses.

Norm Thurston, the state's health reform implementation coordinator, says authorities there "haven't received an official response" from the White House, but "we anticipate getting one soon."

There are some sticking points that don't comply with the exchanges envisioned by the Affordable Care Act and Utah would like to keep it that way.

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UK government urged to consider relaxing drug rules

JUST say yes to considering relaxed drug controls, urged a panel of UK parliamentarians this week - but Prime Minister David Cameron has rejected the calls.

Many countries have loosened their penalties for drug use, including the Czech Republic and Portugal, which introduced a "de-penalisation" strategy in 2000. Citizens caught in possession avoid criminal records but must attend drug advice sessions. Last month, the US states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalise the recreational use of cannabis.

The UK report calls for the effects of these legal moves to be monitored. "Drugs policy ought to be evidence-based as much as possible," it concludes. "We recommend that the government fund a detailed research project to monitor the effects of each legalisation system."

The report notes that 21 countries have now introduced some form of decriminalisation. But the government's response has been lukewarm. "I don't support decriminalisation," said Cameron. "We have a policy which actually is working in Britain. Drugs use is coming down."

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S'pore strongly urges N.Korea to work with international community

SINGAPORE: Singapore has strongly urged the North Korean government to refrain from further actions that would escalate tensions, and work with the international community to preserve peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula.

A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said North Korea's rocket launch on Wednesday is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

It added that Singapore deeply regrets this defiance of the concerns of the international community. The launch also does not serve the best interests of the North Korean people.

- CNA/ck

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Woman Tasered after trying to buy too many iPhones

Resisting arrest?

(Credit:
WMUR-TV Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Normally, when you hear screams outside an Apple store, it's because, oh, the doors have opened and there's a new gizmo for the insatiable.

However, at the Apple store in the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, N.H. on Tuesday, the screams were those of a 44-year-old Chinese woman being Tasered by police.

As WMUR-TV reports, Xiaojie Li, of Newton, N.H. says -- through her 12-year-old daughter's translation -- that she isn't proficient in English.

"She's certainly capable of coming up here and purchasing these things from the Apple store here. Whether her language inhibited that, I really don't know." Those were the words of Captain Bruce Hansen of the Nashua Police Department.

What seems clearer is that she tried to buy more iPhones than was the store's maximum of two. Li told WMUR-TV that they were for family members in China.

On Friday, she had bought two -- which would suggest her English had been good enough to make the purchases. On Tuesday, she came back to buy more.

Her daughter says that the Apple store asked her to leave, but her mother didn't understand.

The store called the police, who claim that she resisted arrest.

WCVB-TV offers a more nuanced take. It says that last Friday Li filmed other people in the Apple store who were allegedly buying more than two iPhones.

According to Hansen, she was asked to leave then too and allegedly complied.

Her daughter told WCVB-TV about the arrest: "So then the police took my mom's phone and tried to take my mom's bag. And my mom tried to ask them why, and they just threw her to the ground."

More Technically Incorrect

Her fiance, John Hugo, told WCVB-TV that Li has been "brutalized by the police."

"Is this proper procedure, beating her up?" he added.

The police offered to WVCB-TV that Apple had a problem with people trying to buy multiple iPhones and then selling them overseas at inflated prices. Which some might deem capitalism.

They also claimed that Li had $16,000 in cash, at the time of her being subdued.

I have contacted Apple to see if the company might like to comment on this peculiar turn of events. I will update, should the company offer its opinion.

Li is due to appear in court in January. It will be interesting to hear then what evidence both sides present to support their versions of events.

It does seem odd, however, that such force was needed to detain a 44-year-old woman.

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Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

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