Search for aliens poses game theory dilemma

SENDING messages into deep space could be the best way for Earthlings to find extraterrestrial intelligence, but it carries a grave risk: alerting hostile aliens to our presence. Game theory may provide a way to navigate this dilemma.

So far the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has mostly been restricted to listening for signs of technology elsewhere. Only a few attempts have been made to broadcast messages towards distant stars. Many scientists are against such "active" SETI for fear of revealing our presence. If all aliens feel the same way then no one will be broadcasting, and the chance of detecting each other is limited.

To weigh up the potential losses and gains, Harold de Vladar of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg turned to the prisoner's dilemma, a game-theory problem in which two prisoners choose between admitting their shared crime or keeping quiet, with different sentences depending on what they say. An individual prisoner gets off scot free if they rat on a partner who remains silent, with the silent partner getting a maximum sentence. If they both rat on each other, each gets a medium sentence. By contrast, if both stay silent, both get token sentences - the best overall result.

De Vladar reasoned that the SETI dilemma is essentially the same, but reversed. Mutual silence for prisoners is equivalent to mutual broadcasting for aliens, giving the best results for both civilisations. And while a selfish prisoner rats, a selfish civilisation is silent, waiting for someone else to take the risk of waving "Over here!" at the rest of the universe.

This led de Vladar to apply the mathematics of the prisoner's dilemma to SETI (International Journal of Astrobiology (IJA), doi.org/jx7). In the classic version of the prisoner's dilemma, each selfishly rats on the other. But as we do not know the character of any aliens out there, and as it is difficult to put a value on the benefits to science, culture and technology of finding an advanced civilisation, de Vladar varied the reward of finding aliens and the cost of hostile aliens finding us. The result was a range of optimal broadcasting strategies. "It's not about whether to do it or not, but how often," says de Vladar.

One intriguing insight was that as you scale up the rewards placed on finding aliens, you can scale down the frequency of broadcasts, while keeping the expected benefit to Earthlings the same. Being able to keep broadcasts to a minimum is good news, because they come with costs - rigging our planet with transmitters won't come cheap - and risk catastrophic penalties, such as interstellar war.

Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, says that game theory is a good approach but that there are too many unknowns. Perhaps aliens are not actively broadcasting because they don't need to. Shostak has recently shown that a civilisation even slightly more advanced than ours could use its sun as a "gravitational lens". Such a lens could detect the lights of New York City from up to 500 light years away, once the light has had time to travel that far (IJA, doi.org/jx8). And there are certainly alien star systems that are closer to us than that.

Earth has also been accidently leaking radio and TV signals for the past century, which may have already been picked up. "Any society at least a few centuries beyond the invention of radio will recognise that deliberate transmissions are not the way they will be found," says Shostak. Quick, turn off those lights!

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Cricket: Clarke vows no complacency against Sri Lanka

HOBART, Australia: Skipper Michael Clarke has vowed there will be no complacency in the Test series with Sri Lanka, insisting Australia will improve on their recent performances against South Africa.

The Australians had the better of the opening two Tests against the world number one Proteas only to be crushed by 309 runs in the series decider in Perth last week.

Sri Lanka are ranked sixth in the world, have not won in 10 Tests in Australia over 25 years and are rated outsiders to upset Clarke's team in the three-Test series, beginning in Hobart on Friday.

Former Australian quick Rodney Hogg has rubbished the Sri Lankan attack as the "worst ever" to come to Australia, with Nuwan Kulasekara, Shaminda Eranga and Chanaka Welegedara only having 38 Tests and 99 wickets between them.

Clarke said the third-ranked Australia were focused only on beating Sri Lanka in the first Test since 168-Test great Ricky Ponting's retirement.

"The opposition is irrelevant to how you judge yourself as players," he said.

"Our goal is not to come out and play the same way against Sri Lanka as we did against South Africa.

"We have to learn from that series, take the positives - and I thought there were a lot of positives - and the areas where we need to get better, we need to make sure we do that.

"I'm sure that if we improve on the series against South Africa, we'll continue to have success."

Mitchell Johnson has been left out for the Hobart Test with Australia opting for the pace attack of Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle and left-armer Mitchell Starc, supplemented by swing bowler Shane Watson and spinner Nathan Lyon.

Recalled Phil Hughes will bat at number three with Watson at four while Clarke and veteran Mike Hussey stay at five and six in the Australian line-up now missing Ponting.

"The strength and advantage we now have in our top four is that all four have opened the batting for Australia," Clarke said.

"So against the new ball they will be very well suited and if we lose early wickets we're still very capable against the new ball which is a real positive."

Clarke also defended the daredevil batting style of opener David Warner, whose second innings dismissal for 29 against South Africa in Perth triggered criticism.

"The one thing we have to understand about Davey, is that the same ball that got him out in Perth, we were all applauding in Adelaide when it went over slips for four. That's the way he plays," he said.

"The only thing I continue to say to Davey is to make sure his intent is there. When the intent is there, his defence is better, his shot selection is better.

"Sometimes it's not going to look great when he gets out, but on the other hand he has the X-factor. He takes the game away from the opposition in the first session of a Test match ... there's not many players in the world that have that talent."

Clarke rated Warner's unbeaten 123 in last year's Hobart Test against New Zealand as among the dashing left-hander's finest.

"I think one of Davey's greatest innings was the hundred he scored here against New Zealand in really tough batting conditions. He still had that intent, even though the wicket was doing a lot. His shot selection was perfect. "In a perfect world, you'd love to bottle that, but you have to have a bit of give and take with Davey."

- AFP/de

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Sprint says it wants to buy out Clearwire for $2.1 billion

Talks between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are heating up.

Sprint confirmed via a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made public today that it was in talks with Clearwire to buy out the remaining stake in the upstart wireless provider that it didn't already own.

The company said it believed that it would cost $2.1 billion to buy out the remaining 49 percent stake in Clearwire, valuing the company at $2.90 a share, or a 5.5 percent premium to its closing price on Wednesday.

Clearwire also submitted a filing confirming the talks, but declined to provide any more details, only noting that a deal isn't guaranteed.

A deal would be a long-time coming for the two companies, which have essentially been tied at the hip for years. Sprint is Clearwire's largest shareholder and customer, yet despite majority control in shares, Sprint did not have control of the board or the direction of the company.

A takeover would make for a cleaner deal for Softbank, which intends to take full control of Sprint next year as part of a deal to pump capital into Sprint and reinvigorate the carrier.

Speculation about talks between the two companies isn't new, and there were reports earlier this week that the two were in negotiations.

Clearwire currently supplies 4G WiMax service to its customers, but is in the middle of its transition to the newer 4G LTE technology, which the rest of the industry has moved on to. Sprint, meanwhile, has reduced its use of Clearwire's WiMax network to legacy WiMax smartphones and its prepaid business, opting to use its own 4G LTE network for its newer smartphones.

The structure in which Sprint owns a significant chunk of Clearwire was set up four years ago as part of a way for Sprint to offload its WiMax operations. At the time, Sprint had managed to sign up other big name partners such as Intel, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast as shareholders.

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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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McAfee Returns to US, Admits Playing 'Crazy Card'

John McAfee's month-long international run from police through two Central American nations ended with a flight to Miami, where the businessman who says he abandoned his fortune admitted to playing the "crazy card."

As a gaggle of media waited near several exit doors at the airport Wednesday night, federal authorities whisked the founder of McAfee anti-virus software off the plane and into a van.

"They said, 'Mr. McAfee, please step forward,'" McAfee, 67, later told ABC News exclusively overnight at a Miami Beach hotel. "I was met by a dozen or maybe fewer officers. I said, 'Am I arrested?' They said, 'No, sir, I am here to help you.' That felt the best of all."

He eventually snuck out of the airport in a cab and headed to South Beach. After walking down famed Ocean Drive to the bewilderment of tourists and eating sushi, his first meal in three days, he sat down with ABC News and admitted to playing the "crazy card" and says he is broke.

"I have nothing now," McAfee said. He claims he left everything behind in Belize, including $20 million in investments and about 15 properties. "I've got a pair of clothes and shoes, my friend dropped off some cash."

Just hours earlier, the self-made millionaire was deported by Guatemalan police who forced him aboard his U.S.-bound flight away from the home and the two women he said he loves. After he arrived on South Beach, he said, a mysterious "Canadian friend" ordered another man he'd never met to drop off a wad of fresh $5 bills that McAfee later displayed to ABC News, pulling them from his coat pocket.

John McAfee Arrested in Guatemala Overnight Watch Video

Software Founder Breaks Silence: McAfee Speaks on Murder Allegations Watch Video

He says he left his fortune, including a beachfront compound, behind after his neighbor Greg Faull was found shot to death in Belize on Nov. 10.

Belize officials said he isn't a suspect, but when they asked to question him, McAfee disguised himself and ran.

After three weeks ducking authorities in Belize, by hiding in attics, in the jungle and in dingy hotels, he turned up in Guatemala Dec. 3.

Barely a day later he was detained for entering the country illegally. As Guatemala officials grappled with how to handle his request for asylum and the Belize government's demand for his deportation, McAfee fell ill. The mysterious illness, described by his attorney alternately as a heart ailment or a nervous breakdown, led to a scene with reporters chasing his ambulance down the narrow streets of Guatemala City and right into the emergency room, where McAfee appeared unresponsive.

He now says it was all a ruse:
"It was a deception but who did it hurt? I look pretty healthy, don't I?"

He says he faked the illness in order to buy some time for a judge to hear his case and stay his deportation to Belize, a government he believes wants him dead. When asked whether he believes Belize officials where inept, he didn't mince words.

"I was on the run with a 20-year-old girl for three and a half weeks inside their borders and everyone was looking for me, and they did not catch me," he said. "I escaped, was captured and they tried to send me back. Now I'm sitting in Miami. There had to be some ineptness."

The man who many believe only wants attention answered critics who called his month-long odyssey and blog posts a publicity stunt by simply saying, "What's a better story, millionaire mad man on the run. You [the media] saved my ass. Because you paid attention to the story. As long as you are reporting, it is hard to whack somebody that the world is watching."

He denies any involvement in his neighbor's death but adds that he is not particularly concerned about clearing his name. He is focused on getting his 20-year-old and 17-year-old girlfriends out of Belize and says he has no idea what he'll do next, where he'll live or how he'll support himself.

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A deliberate language barrier

THE United States and Britain are two countries "divided by a common language", George Bernard Shaw allegedly quipped.

This statement, amusingly paradoxical on the face of it, might be more accurate than it seems. On "War of words: The language paradox explained", evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel argues that languages proliferate to differentiate competing groups.

If so, a shared tongue is not what the transatlantic rivals would have wanted. Sure enough, they quickly diverged; some of the differences between US and British spellings seem to have arisen as part of a knowing attempt to widen the gulf.

So perhaps it was Shaw's fellow wit Oscar Wilde who got closer to the mark when he observed in his 1887 story The Canterville Ghost that "we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language".

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Asia shares gain, unmoved by North Korea rocket launch

HONG KONG: Asian markets rose on Wednesday as dealers welcomed signs of progress in US fiscal cliff talks and upbeat data from Germany and Spain, while shrugging off news of North Korea's rocket launch.

With investors becoming more confident the safe-haven yen came back under pressure ahead of a general election in Japan on Sunday and expectations of more monetary easing by the country's central bank.

Tokyo rose 0.59 percent, adding 56.14 points to 9,581.46, Seoul was up 0.55 percent, gaining 10.82 points to 1,975,44, and Sydney climbed 0.17 percent to a 17-month high, adding 7.8 points to 4,583.8.

Hong Kong ended up 0.80 percent, adding 179.41 points to close at 22,503.35, while Shanghai was 0.39 percent, or 8.03 points, higher at 2,082.73

US President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner have swapped new offers to avoid the fiscal cliff of huge tax hikes and spending cuts due to come into effect on January 1, according to sources on both sides.

It fuelled hopes that the two, who have been at loggerheads over plans to increase taxes on the rich and slashing aid to Medicare, could come to an agreement.

If a deal is not reached by the New Year, the package currently in place is widely expected to send the economy into recession.

Markets are also eyeing a meeting of the Federal Reserve policy committee, which is to decide on what action to take as the end approaches of its "Operation Twist" -- selling short-term debt to buy longer-term debt.

There are expectations that policymakers will replace it with more outright bond purchases, or "quantitative easing", aimed at lowering interest rates to encourage businesses to invest and hire.

Buying support was also provided by positive numbers from Germany, where investor sentiment in Europe's key economic machine hit a seven-month high on hopes it will dodge recession.

The confidence index from the ZEW economic institute surged to 6.9 points in December from minus 15.7 in November. Forecasts had been for a reading of minus 11.3.

It was the highest reading since May and the first time since then that the index has been in positive territory.

Spain also enjoyed a successful Treasury bond auction, easing fears over its ability to raise cash to pay its bills.

Traders on Wall Street ended on a positive note. The Dow rose 0.60 percent, a fifth straight day of gains, while the S&P 500 added 0.65 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 1.18 percent.

Confidence in "riskier" assets hit the yen, usually the go-to unit in times of uncertainty, in US trade on Tuesday and it remained under pressure in Asia Wednesday.

The dollar rose to 82.77 yen, compared with 82.51 yen in New York, while the euro was at 107.70 yen from 107.28 yen. That compares with 82.36 yen and 106.68 yen in Asia Tuesday.

The euro bought $1.3010 Wednesday, from $1.3003 in New York.

The yen has come under pressure in recent weeks ahead of Sunday's polls widely expected to see Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan beaten by the Liberal Democratic Party, which is headed by Shinzo Abe.

Abe, a former prime minister, has promised to push a more aggressive monetary easing policy to jumpstart the economy.

Investors shrugged off news that North Korea had fired its rocket, which critics insist was being used as a disguised ballistic missile test.

Previous launches and nuclear tests have led to an initial asset sell-off owing to geopolitical fears, but regional markets remained up in early trade.

"Frankly, it was almost a non-event," Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, told Dow Jones Newswires.

On oil markets New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate for delivery in January, edged up 23 cents to $86.02, and Brent North Sea crude for January added 44 cents at $108.45.

Gold was at $1,713.23 at 0805 GMT compared with $1,709.35 late on Tuesday.

In other markets:

-- Taipei rose 1.0 percent, or 76.5 points, to 7,690.19.

HTC rose 4.05 percent to Tw$282.5 while TSMC was 0.1 percent higher at Tw$98.4.

-- Manila closed 0.20 percent lower, dipping 11.71 points to 5,819.79.

Ayala Corp. fell 3.22 percent to 510 pesos while Philippine Long Distance Telephone slipped 1.29 percent to 2,596 pesos.

-- Wellington ended 0.77 percent, or 30.92 points, lower at 3,995.26.

Telecom fell 2.0 percent to NZ$2.19, Fletcher Building also lost 2.0 percent to NZ$8.28 and Contact Energy was down 2.1 percent at NZ$5.10.

- AFP/lp

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Flickr's new iPhone app puts mobile front and center

The new iPhone app from Flickr attempts to make the photo-sharing site fully usable with a smartphone.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

Flickr released an overhauled iPhone app today, capping a year of effort to reclaim its lost glory with software that it believes will become central rather than peripheral to using the photo-sharing site.

The new app is designed to show off individual photos better, to ease sign-up for new users, to speed photo browsing, and to improve discovery. Better smartphone support was critical, given how much activity has moved to mobile apps.

"Engagement to a high percentage is happening on mobile," said Markus Spiering, head of the Flickr product at Yahoo. "It really brings Flickr into the palm of your hand."

Photos are of course at the center of the new app. Scrolling vertically shows recent photos posted by Flickr members' contacts; if you want to see more from a particular contact, you can scroll horizontally from an image.

Looking at an individual photo's page, you can read and write comments, double-tap to mark it as a favorite, rotate the phone to landscape orientation to see a high-resolution, full-screen version, and tap an information button to virtually flip over the photo to see where it was taken, what groups and sets it belongs to, and other details.

Tabs at the bottom of the app's screen let you navigate among different sections to reach Flickr services. For example, one lets you browse photos from your contacts and groups; another is for discovering photos that are interesting or were taken nearby; and another is for delving into an individual's photo stream. You can also take photos with some detailed camera controls, and uploading them lets you add title, caption, and location details.

More apps will come.

"We're doing iPhone in this case first, because it's the most popular camera on Flickr now," Spiering said. For example, 3,817 Flickr users uploaded 62,839 images yesterday taken with an
iPhone 4S. But
Android and
tablet apps will follow.

"We are planning shortly after the iPhone launch to bring the experience also on Android -- a consistent experience that feels natural and native to the platform," he said. "Going forward there should not be a difference between where you use Flickr," he said, mentioning smartphones, tablets, and desktop computer.

Today, Flickr doesn't offer apps for iPad or Android tablet, though of course it can be used with the browser.

Flickr pioneered online photography, letting people share photos, comment on them, create and join groups for particular areas of interest, and use third-party software and services to use the service. It's no wonder Yahoo acquired the start-up.

In recent years, though, it's lost some of its luster as people moved online photo activity to sites with a stronger social fabric: Facebook is a natural vehicle for sharing photos with social contacts, Facebook's Instagram has successfully blended photography with social sharing, and Twitter is angling to get in on the action as well.

Perhaps because Yahoo doesn't really have social network turf to defend, Flickr has one interesting differentiator over rivals: it's relatively open. In contrast, Facebook and Twitter, which block Web crawlers, are often invisible in search engines. Twitter and Instagram are building barriers to photo sharing. Flickr, though, can be a repository for Instagram photos, and it's got a built-in mechanism for sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google's Blogger, and more. And its application programming interface (API) means anything from Apple TVs to Windows 8 can integrate with Flickr's online repository.

And Flickr is still relevant if no longer cutting-edge, with 85 million active users per day.

Flickr also continued its Web site retooling, cleaning up site navigation and bringing the "justified" view that fills the screen with wall-to-wall photos to more areas of the site, Spiering said. Yahoo tests showed that user activity increased significantly with the new Web site.

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Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

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Cops Have Identity of Gunman in Oregon Shooting

A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals and seriously injuring a third before killing himself, has been identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.

The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and proceeding to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.

"We have been able to identify the shooter over last night," Sheriff Craig Roberts told "Good Morning America" today.
"At this point in time, because of the investigation, we're actually doing supplemental search warrants, we're not able to release the name of the individual at point in time for the reason being that we don't want to jeopardize the investigation."

Police have not released the names of the two deceased. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.

The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital, according to Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.

PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting

Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of the injured victim, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.

"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."

Christopher Onstott/Pamplen Media Group/Portland Tribune

911 Calls From New Jersey Supermarket Shooting Watch Video

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.

More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, police said. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

"For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place where we can take our families, especially during the holiday season," Roberts said. "Things like this are not supposed to happen."

Roberts also said that shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot. Other shoppers helped escort individuals out of the mall and out of harm's way, he said.

"There were a huge amount of people running in different directions, and it was chaos for a lot of citizens, but true heroes were stepping up in this time of high stress," Roberts said. "E.R. nurses on the scene were providing medical care to those injured, a physician on the scene was helping provide care to the wounded."

Mall shopper Daniel Martinez told KATU that he had just sat down at a Jamba Juice inside the mall when he heard rapid gunfire. He turned and saw the masked gunman, dressed in all black, about 10 feet away from him.

"I just saw him (the gunman) and thought, 'I need to go somewhere,'" Martinez said. "It was so fast, and at that time, everyone was moving around."

Martinez said he ran to the nearest clothing store. As he ran, he motioned for another woman to follow; several others ran to the store as well, hiding in a fitting room. They stayed there for an hour and a half until SWAT teams told them it was safe to leave the mall.

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