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Bell tolls for Beijing's Drum Tower homes

BEIJING - China's capital is to destroy swathes of ancient courtyard homes surrounding a 13th-century landmark in what is being called an effort to preserve Beijing's historical legacy, residents said Friday.

Large numbers of hutong homes, some of them dating back to the Qing dynasty, will be demolished around the Drum and Bell Towers -- a tourist hotspot in Beijing's historic centre -- to make way for a large plaza, they said.

Notices for the "destroy and evict" project are plastered throughout the quarter, dated Wednesday and saying the work was due to be completed by February 24.

Besides protecting the historic legacy of the capital, the project is also aimed at restoring and repairing old and dilapidated buildings, the notices said.

Forced evictions are a major source of unrest in China. Ordinary citizens routinely accuse local officials and developers of cashing in on a property boom by clearing away longstanding residents to pave the way for new projects.

Destroying old homes in central Beijing has particular sensitivity. Critics say new development projects rob the capital of its cultural legacy.

"We have been hearing this was going to happen for years, but now that the notices are up there is not much you can do but leave," said souvenir shop seller Ma Yong.

"When I first saw the notices I felt nothing but despair."

Besides having her rented shop torn down, Ma's small home nearby, where she lives with her retired husband, will also be flattened.

Residents must negotiate compensation with the newly set up "destroy and evict" office near the Bell Tower, with compensation beginning at around 40,000 yuan (US$5,800) per square metre.

Between 130 and 500 homes are to be destroyed, state press reports said.

Officials refused to answer questions when approached by AFP.

"A lot of people are opposed to the campaign, 40,000 yuan per square metre is too cheap, especially with the price of housing in Beijing sky-rocketing," said the manager of a coffee shop near the Drum Tower, who gave her surname only as Wang.

"People are already asking for 150,000 yuan per square metre," she said.

Others said they were happy with the compensation.

"We took the money," said Zhou Li, 51, who was to move out to the suburbs with his elderly parents this weekend after living most of his life near the Bell Tower.

- AFP/ir

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How Google is taking the Knowledge Graph global

The Knowledge Graph became available in seven new languages this month.

(Credit:
Google)

Earlier this month, Google shared a fascinating statistic. The number of items in the company's Knowledge Graph -- its database of people, places, and things, and the connections between them -- had tripled in size over its first seven months in the wild, to 18 billion facts.

Up until this month, though, those facts were available only in English. It wasn't until December 4 that Google made the Knowledge Graph truly global, by introducing it in seven new languages: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian.

The project to make Knowledge Graph content available in so many new languages simultaneously was no small feat. Even in English, creating an easily searchable database of relationships is fraught with potential problems. If I search for "giants," do I mean the baseball team, the football team, or enormous people? Using a variety of signals, Google makes its best guess -- and then presents its findings in a handy panel on the right-hand side of the results page. (Or it will display a panel asking if you want results for baseball or football.)

Now imagine running that same query in other languages. What does a user searching for "giants" in French want? How about in Italian? Japanese?

The task of localizing Google's Knowledge Graph fell in part to Tamar Yehoshua, who oversees Google's efforts to take search international. What roadblocks has Google found along the way? Here are a few.

Google's Tamar Yehoshua.

(Credit:
Google)

Figuring out where you are. This challenge predates the Knowledge Graph, but determining a user's location is still the foundation of all localization. The most important signal is the Google domain you're using -- .com indicates the United States, .co.jp indicates Japan, and so on. From there. Google looks at your IP address, the language of your browser, and the language you're searching in. The idea is to drill down to your current city so that results are as local as possible. (Using the settings page, users can search as if they were in another city.)

This has a big impact on search results. Search "UPC" on Google.com and you'll see information about universal product codes. But take the same search to Google.ie, the company's Irish domain, and the query brings up results for UPC Ireland -- the biggest cable television provider in that country.

Making answers locally relevant. Knowing where users are is only the first step. From there Google has to consider what sorts of things other people in that location tend to search for, and offer results accordingly. This is perhaps the Knowledge Graph's biggest challenge as it expands around the globe, because a query that Google can answer well in English might not be useful in another country. Getting it right means more than performing a basic translation.

"We want to understand entities that are culturally relevant as well," Yehoshua said. "In most software programs, you translate search strings -- all you have to do is translate a string to make your product work in another locale. In this instance, with the Knowledge Graph, we want to make sure the entities are culturally relevant."

Hence a search for "sumo" brings up much more detailed information about the sport in a Japanese-language search than it does in an English language search. (In San Francisco, naturally, the first search result is a software startup.)

Making the Knowledge Graph work in other languages means teaching Google about the cultural traditions that exist everywhere it is used, and generating results that are useful to local residents. It's a tall order.

Different cultures want different answers. Even when language isn't a factor in Knowledge Graph queries, Google still finds that other cultures have different expectations when they search.

Take the search for "Barack Obama." In the United States, the Knowledge Graph shows facts like his name, age, children, and education. Do the same search in Japan, though, and you'll find another fact, prominently displayed: the president's height (6'1"). It turns out that Japanese queries about the president involve a disproportionate amount of queries about how tall Obama is, and so the Knowledge Graph has to account for that.

Doing all this mostly with algorithms. Google has localization teams around the world that help bring the service to new languages. But the Knowledge Graph isn't a handcrafted guide to world culture.

"It is predominantly algorithmic," Yehoshua said.

The machine learning involved in getting Google to understand the relative importance of millions of culturally distinct subjects in real time is not trivial. As Yehoshua illustrated for me, expanding into new languages results in all sorts of new complications. But if Google is ever going to transform into the "Star Trek" computer, this is how it has to begin. And tackling those complications has another benefit for Google: it makes it harder for challengers to compete. And with Bing now adding Knowledge Graph-like features to its own search results page, it's clear that competitors will be following close behind.

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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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Critics Faulted Rice's Work on Benghazi, Africa

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice removed herself from possible consideration as secretary of state after becoming yet another player in the divide between the left and right.

Rice, who withdrew her name Thursday, has faced months of criticism over how she characterized the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She also has come under fire for her approach to dealing with African strongmen.

Rice became a target for conservatives when she went on Sunday morning current affairs shows such as ABC News' "This Week" following the Benghazi attack and failed to characterize it as a pre-meditated act of terror. Instead, she said it was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and cited in the region as an example of anti-Islamicism in the West.

After it became clear that Rice's assertions were untrue and elements of the Obama administration may have known that to be the case, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte said they would do whatever they could to block Rice's possible nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

GOP Senators 'Troubled' After Meeting With Ambassador Rice Watch Video

President Obama to Senator McCain: 'Go After Me' Watch Video

Susan Rice: U.S. Not 'Impotent' in Muslim World Watch Video

"This is about the role she played around four dead Americans when it seems to be that the story coming out of the administration -- and she's the point person -- is so disconnected to reality, I don't trust her," Graham said. "And the reason I don't trust her is because I think she knew better. And if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of America."

Members of the administration defended Rice. At his testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, said Rice was speaking from unclassified talking points given to her by the CIA.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated what Petraeus said outside his closed-door hearing before the Senate.

"The key is that they were unclassified talking points at a very early stage. And I don't think she should be pilloried for this. She did what I would have done or anyone else would have done that was going on a weekend show," Feinstein said. "To say that she is unqualified to be secretary of state, I think, is a mistake. And the way it keeps going, it's almost as if the intent is to assassinate her character."

Minutes after she announced her withdrawal from the process, Graham tweeted, "I respect Ambassador Rice's decision."

McCain's office released a paper statement saying, "Senator McCain thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans."

Over the last few weeks, criticism of Rice had grown beyond her response to Benghazi to include a closer scrutiny of her work in Africa, where she had influence over U.S. policy during the Clinton administration.

Critics of her Africa dealings were not partisan -- but included human rights workers, journalists and some Africans themselves.

Among the most serious critiques was the accusation that she actively protected Rwandan President Paul Kagame and senior members of his government from being sanctioned for funding and supporting the rebels that caused Eastern Congo's recent violence.

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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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