NY Passes Nation's Toughest Gun Law

Today New York became the first state to pass a gun control law -- the toughest in the nation -- since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting massacre last month.Acting one month and a day since the rampage killing that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law shortly after 5 p.m.Called the New York Safe Act, the law includes...

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Today on New Scientist: 14 January 2013

Activist's death sparks open-access tribute on Twitter Hundreds of researchers have been offering free access to their work in tribute to internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on Friday Exploding microchip could make arms dumps safer Shrapnel and bullets can set off huge explosions if they hit weapons stores. But microchip-based detonators could help keep them safeThe...

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Islamists guerrillas flee French air strikes in Mali

BAMAKO: French air strikes forced Islamist guerrillas to flee towns in northern Mali and Paris secured new international support for military action as the militants struck back, seizing a small western town.The Islamists said they had made a "tactical retreat" from Timbuktu and other key towns where they have imposed a brutal version of Islamic law for nearly 10 months.But they struck...

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Can't stop eating? Pump will suck your stomach contents

Meet the "apparatus for treating obesity by extracting food." That's what Dean Kamen's stomach pump is called in a recently granted U.S. patent, and it looks a lot less fun than Kamen's most famous invention, the Segway. The good part is you can eat anything you like. The bad part is you have to get a tube put into your stomach and then suck the food out with a gadget called the AspireAssist. Kamen...

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"Fantastic" New Flying Frog Found—Has Flappy Forearms

Scientists have stumbled across a new species of flying frog—on the ground.While hiking a lowland forest in 2009, not far from Ho Chi Minh City (map), Vietnam, "we came across a huge green frog, sitting on a log," said Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney and lead author of a new study on the frog.Rowley later discovered that the 3.5-inch-long (9-centimeter-long)...

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Arias Denied Guilt Despite Sex Photos, DNA

A defiant Jodi Arias insisted she was innocent of killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander even after a detective told her that he had nude photos of them together on the day he died."Are you sure it's me? Because I was not there," Arias is heard saying in the police interrogation tape played for the Arizona jury today.When Detective Esteban Flores tells Arias she is seen in...

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Benefits of emissions cuts kick in only next century

Are we the altruistic generation? Do we care what happens to our grandchildren, and to their children? Or are we with Groucho Marx when he said: "Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?" A new study of climate...

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Benjamin Pwee joins DPP leadership as acting secretary-general

SINGAPORE: Opposition politician Benjamin Pwee has joined the leadership of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)as acting secretary-general.He was co-opted into the Central Executive Committee (CEC) at a closed-door meeting on Sunday, while six other independents were officially accepted as party members and cadres.The DPP's secretary-general, Mr Seow Khee Leng, went on leave from the...

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Oracle releases software update to fix Java vulnerability

Oracle released an emergency software update today to fix a security vulnerability in its Java software that could allow attackers to break into computers.The update, which is available on Oracle's Web site, fixes a critical vulnerability in Oracle's Java 7 that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code. The attack can be induced if someone visits a Web site that's been...

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Pictures: Civil War Shipwreck Revealed by Sonar

Photograph by Jesse CancelmoA fishing net, likely only decades old, drapes over machinery that once connected the Hatteras' pistons to its paddle wheels, said Delgado.From archived documents, the NOAA archaeologist learned that Blake, the ship's commander, surrendered as his ship was sinking. "It was listing to port, [or the left]," Delgado said. The Alabama took the wounded and the rest of the crew...

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