Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, AP

The magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.

Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg below the knee. With the help of a prosthetic leg, Exantus is able to dance again. (Read about his comeback.)

Why We Love It

"This is an intimate photo, taken in the subject's most personal space as he lies asleep and vulnerable, perhaps unaware of the photographer. The dancer's prosthetic leg lies in the foreground as an unavoidable reminder of the hardships he faced in the 2010 earthquake. This image makes me want to hear more of Georges' story."—Ben Fitch, associate photo editor

"This image uses aesthetics and the beauty of suggestion to tell a story. We are not given all the details in the image, but it is enough to make us question and wonder."—Janna Dotschkal, associate photo editor

Published February 1, 2013

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Ala. Standoff: Police Mum About Talks With Suspect

As a police standoff with an Alabama man accused of holding a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker entered its fifth day, authorities were saying little except that their talks with the 65-year-old loner were continuing through a ventilation pipe.

Negotiators were still trying late Friday to persuade Jimmy Lee Dykes to surrender. Police have said they believe the Vietnam-era veteran fatally shot a school bus driver on Tuesday, and then abducted the boy from the bus and disappeared into the home-made bunker.

While police were mostly staying mum about the delicate negotiations, it fell to neighbors to fill in the blanks about Dykes, described by some as a menacing figure who held anti-government views.

One of Dykes' next-door neighbors said the suspect spent two or three months constructing the bunker, digging several feet into the ground and then building a structure of lumber and plywood, which he covered with sand and dirt.

Neighbor Michael Creel said Dykes put the plastic pipe underground from the bunker to the end of his driveway so he could hear if anyone drove up to his gate. When Dykes finished the shelter a year or so ago, he invited Creel to see it — and he did.

"He was bragging about it. He said, 'Come check it out," Creel said.

He said he believes Dykes' goal with the standoff is to publicize his political beliefs.

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Who Is Jimmy Lee Dykes? Watch Video

Alabama Boy Held Hostage in Underground Bunker Watch Video

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Boy, 5, Held Captive in Bunker Watch Video

"I believe he wants to rant and rave about politics and government," Creel said. "He's very concerned about his property. He doesn't want his stuff messed with."

Police have used a ventilation pipe to the bunker to talk to the man and deliver the boy medication for his emotional disorders, but they have not revealed how often they are in touch or what the conversations have been about. Authorities waited until Friday to confirm the suspect's identity.

While much of what is going on inside the bunker remains a mystery, local officials who have spoken to police or the boy's family have described a small room with food, electricity and a TV. And while the boy has his medication, an official also said he has been crying for his parents.

Meanwhile, Midland City residents held out hope that the standoff would end safely and mourned for the slain bus driver and his family. Candlelight vigils have been held nightly at a gazebo in front of City Hall. Residents prayed, sang songs such as "Amazing Grace" and nailed homemade wooden crosses on the gazebo's railings alongside signs that read: "We are praying for you."

"We're doing any little thing that helps show support for him," said 15-year-old Taylor Edwards said.

Former hostage negotiators said authorities must be cautious and patient as long as they are confident that the boy is unharmed. Ex-FBI hostage negotiator Clint Van Zandt advised against any drastic measures such as cutting the electricity or putting sleeping gas inside the bunker because it could agitate Dykes.

The negotiator should try to ease Dykes' anxieties over what will happen when the standoff ends, and refer to both the boy and Dykes by their first names, he said.

"I want to give him a reason to come out," Van Zandt said,

Police seemed to be following that pattern. At a brief news conference to release a photo of Dykes, they brushed off any questions about possible charges.

"It's way too early for that," said Kevin Cook, a spokesman for the Alabama state troopers.

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US medical research chimps to retire to sanctuaries

IT IS good news for chimpanzees, but bad news for people with hepatitis C. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is likely to slash medical research on chimpanzees, and transfer most research chimps to sanctuaries. The plan is being hailed as a triumph for animal rights, but there is a snag: it could delay work on a hepatitis C vaccine.

Following a 2011 report concluding that most medical research on chimps was unnecessary, the NIH - which uses 360 of around 1000 research chimps in the US - set up an advisory committee. This body has now issued recommendations. Most of the NIH's chimps should retire to sanctuaries, but about 50 should be retained for future research, housed in environments that promote their natural behaviour: large groups, plenty of space and lots of activities.

"It's excellent news," says Barbara King of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "These chimpanzees have served and suffered for us."

But some hepatitis C researchers are less happy. Chimps are the only non-human animal that the virus infects, so are used in the development of a vaccine.

"If there is no access to a chimpanzee model, it will likely slow vaccine development and put human lives at risk," says Stanley Lemon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This article appeared in print under the headline "US chimps retire"

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Community leadership important for S'pore's development: Chan Chun Sing

SINGAPORE: Acting Minister for Social and Family Development, Chan Chun Sing, said Singapore will face more challenges as it moves towards its next stage of development.

While national leaders will look at issues from a broader perspective, Mr Chan said local community leadership is also needed.

He was speaking at the first Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Symposium which was held at the National University of Singapore on Friday.

Some 80 students are currently enrolled in the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme.

Mr Chan said such platforms and the presence of community leaders are important as they have always been a part of Singapore's rich history.

Mr Chan said the role of community leaders was evident from British colonial rule.

He said, "They did not wait for the government to initiate things to do. They took it upon themselves to identify local needs, whereby they can play a useful role".

Going forward, Mr Chan said it will be about grooming a new generation of community leaders.

He said: "Not only do we hope you will understand the challenges at the local level, we also hope that you will come up with innovative solutions. We also hope you will play a part to mobilise actions to solve or at least address some of these local issues.

"We need to look for innovative and new solutions. We cannot just adopt solutions that have been adopted by people from other countries wholesale. We should look at them closely, study them in context, and always apply them in context to our local situation down here."

At the symposium, six of the Programme's Fellows got to share the various projects they embarked on.

The projects ranged from looking at the community's role in preventing child abuse, to exploring interim home care at a community hospital.

The speakers are part of the first batch of students in the programme since it was launched in 2011.

For medical student Andrew Arjun Sayampanathan, who is currently on an internship at the Central Community Development Centre as part of the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme, it was the perfect opportunity to test a theory he had learned in university.

Applying it to Kampong Glam residents, the asset-based community development model was a means to empower needy or elderly residents to look at their proficiencies.

It was a different take on the needs-based community development model many social organisations adopt.

"The needs-based model looks at the deficiencies of individuals and what is the individual deficient in. When we look at the assets-based community development model, we see what the individual is proficient in so he or she does not need to be dependent on an external organisation," explained Andrew.

Andrew said the findings obtained from the asset-based community development models will allow them to create independent communities based on the proficiencies and assets of the individuals.

- CNA/fa

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Chrome, IE, Silk pry open mobile-browsing market

Chrome and Internet Explorer have carved their way into the top five mobile browsers, according to Net Applications' measurements of browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

New mobile browsers including Google's Chrome, Microsoft's IE, and Amazon's Silk are gaining
a foothold in a market that's growing faster than traditional browsing on personal computers.

The mobile browsing market has long been dominated by three products. Apple's
Safari has long
held the top spot in usage share measurements by Net Applications, with second place going to
Google's unbranded
Android browser after it surpassed Opera Mini last year.

Safari had 61.0 percent, the Android browser 21.5 percent, and Opera Mini 9.8 percent of usage
in January, measurements released today show.

But new contenders are starting to appear now.

The most assured of success is Chrome, which pushed aside BlackBerry OS's browser last November for fourth
place. Chrome works on Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, or 4.1 and 4.2, aka Jelly Bean,
and now ships with newer Android devices.

Chrome rose from 1.5 percent of use in December to 2.0 percent in January, Net Applications
said.

The next to bump BlackBerry down a peg is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which rose from 1.2
percent to 1.3 percent to claim fifth place in January.

Tablets and smartphones account for a steadily increasing fraction of browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

The BlackBerry browser -- which could get a boost if the brand-new BlackBerry 10 OS and its first two
phones, the Q10 and Z10 catch on -- slipped down to 1.2 percent
of browser usage in January.

That's still ahead of Amazon's Silk, at 0.8 percent, or Opera Mobile, at 0.6 percent. And it's far
ahead of Mozilla's
Firefox version for Android, which didn't even cross the 0.05 percent
threshold.

Mobile browsing is on the increase, rising to an all-time high of 11.8 percent of total browsing in
January, according to Net Applications.

On the desktop, Internet Explorer's market share losses have stabilized, according to Net Applications' measurements.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

On PCs, the browser usage share remained relatively stable.

IE remained the leader with 55.1 percent of the market, and Firefox at 19.9 percent kept its edge
over Chrome at 17.5 percent. Safari and Opera stayed level at 5.2 percent and 1.8 percent,
respectively.

Net Applications bases its
usage data on activity logged on a collection of more than 40,000 Web sites with more than
160 million visits each month. It attempts to weight the data to account for differences in its
collection of sites and overall global Internet usage. It also logs only the first Web site visit by a
user on each day, in an attempt to measure what people are using rather than how much they
use it.

A rival measurement service, StatCounter, bases its
measurements on clicks only and doesn't attempt any geographic weighting. It shows different
winners and losers, with Chrome in the lead at 36.5 percent, IE next with 30.7 percent, and Firefox in third place with 21.4 percent.

StatCounter, which uses different methodology for tallying browser usage, shows Chrome as the top worldwide browser for January 2013.

(Credit:
StatCounter)

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Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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Columbia Shuttle Crew Remembered 10 Years Later

Iain Clark is a teenager now. He was eight years old when his mother, Dr Laurel Clark, and six other astronauts died when the space shuttle Columbia fell apart in the skies over Texas 10 years ago today.

Iain's father, Dr. Jonathon Clark, told ABC News recently that he and Iain will never really recover.

"There will always be a sense of loss and pain and hurt," said Clark. "I've lost a lot, but I've gained a lot, too. I have a perspective and reverence for life. I have my son, and seeing him through this has been very rewarding -- though it has been difficult, as well."

Feb. 1, the anniversary of the Columbia accident, is the day NASA chooses to remember all the astronauts who have died during missions.

Spaceflight is a risky business. Some of the accidents are well known. Others, not really. But they all illustrate just how dangerous it is to leave our planet and venture into orbit.

Three accidents, in particular, are seared in our memories because NASA's missions have been so dramatic, and so public.

First, there was the fire on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed Apollo 1's crew of Command Pilot "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger Chaffee. At the time, NASA was racing to beat the Soviet Union to the moon.

Second was the space shuttle Challenger's accident on Jan. 28, 1986, which was seen live by children across the country because its crew included the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe.

Finally, Columbia's accident, on a clear, sunny Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003, as it re-entered from space after a seemingly routine science mission, stunned the country. It also meant the end of NASA's space shuttle program.

This morning at 9:16 a.m. ET, the time Columbia would have landed at the Kennedy Space Center in 2003, there will be a minute of silence. A bell will toll seven times at the Johnson Space Center for the seven astronauts who died on Columbia's final mission, STS 107: Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Mission Specialists Michael Anderson, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla and Ilan Ramon.

It took months for the commission investigating the accident to determine the cause: foam. A piece the size of a briefcase broke off one of the shuttle's external fuel tanks, punching a hole in the orbiter's left wing.

The crew of seven knew something was wrong very late during re-entry, but there wasn't anything they or mission control could do to save them or Columbia. It took managers at the Johnson Space Center months to accept that something so simple as a piece of foam could do so much damage.

Wayne Hale, who guided NASA's space shuttle program back from the accident, was the only NASA employee who publicly accepted responsibility for Columbia's accident.

Hale now works in the private sector, but recently wrote in a blog about the internal discussion at mission control while engineers discussed what they thought might be a problem -- but weren't sure.

"After one of the MMTs [mission management teams] when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed," Hale wrote, "[Flight Director Jon Harpold] gave me his opinion: 'You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS [thermal protection system]. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?'

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Immigration reform – just part of America's new dream

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

After an election in which Hispanic voters arguably delivered a second term to President Barack Obama, it was clear that both leaders of both major political parties were going to start thinking about comprehensive immigration reform - long a priority for the nation's growing Latino population.

First out of the gate this week was a bipartisan group of senators dubbed the "gang of eight", with a plan that would give legal status to some 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the US, but also demand payment of back taxes. Obama weighed in the next day, suggesting he wanted legal status granted to existing immigrants "from the outset" - exposing a potential rift with the senators, who want to delay reform until stricter border controls are put in place

Whether any plan will pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives remains unclear.

As New Scientist explained last September, though, achieving legal status is just one hurdle facing US Hispanics - huge disparities exist in income, family wealth and educational opportunities.

If those gaps aren't narrowed, warn leading demographers and social scientists, the nation as a whole will face some tough challenges retaining its economic and technological edge in the coming decades.

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HRW condemns Russia's "worst post-Soviet crackdown"

MOSCOW: Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned the Russian authorities under President Vladimir Putin for unleashing the toughest crackdown against civil society since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The Kremlin in 2012 unleashed the worst political crackdown in Russia's post-Soviet history," the New-York based rights watchdog said in an English-language statement released in Moscow accompanying the release of its annual world report.

"This (2012) has been the worst year for human rights in Russia in recent memory," the rights group quoted Hugh Williamson, its Europe and Central Asia director as saying.

"Russia's civil society is standing strong but with the space around it shrinking rapidly, it needs support now more than ever."

After returning to the Kremlin for a third term despite unprecedented protests against his 13-year rule, Putin signed off on a raft of laws in what critics saw as a bid to quash dissent.

The new legislation re-criminalised slander, raised fines for misdemeanours at opposition protests and forced non-governmental organisations that receive foreign funding to carry a "foreign agent" tag in a move seen as a throwback to Soviet times.

- AFP/al

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Shutterstock's new tools revamp photo and video search

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the red range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

It's a challenge for anybody selling a wide range of anything online: how do you get the right products in front of the right customers?

Shutterstock, which sells stock-art photos and videos to customers such as ad agencies and PowerPoint presenters, has the matchmaking problem in spades. With 550,000 active customers and more than 23.7 million images, pairing the right buyer with the right photo isn't easy.

Which is why the New York-based company, which went public last October, is retooling how it presents its products to better compete with iStockphoto and other rivals.

Shutterstock has just launched a new stock image discovery tool called Spectrum on its labs site that lets people explore categories of photos based on their dominant color.

Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer

(Credit:
Shutterstock)

It's not the first such move. Last year, it launched an
iPad app whose "mosaic" interface presents wall-to-wall images that customers can browse rapidly by swipe gestures. A similar interface for the Web, Instant, was the first Shutterstock labs project.

And it's not the last, said Chief Executive and founder Jon Oringer: an overhaul for video is on the way so customers can evaluate footage with something approaching the ease and rapidity that they can check the results of searching for still images.

"With 50 thumbnail image results, it's very easy to scan. When it's 50 video clips, it's very hard to scan -- you don't know what's in each video," Oringer said. "We're working on ways to take that whole page of data and show it to you really quickly."

On top of that, the company takes a very Googley approach with its traditional photo-search techniques, in which customers type in search keywords and see an array of image thumbnails. "We're tracking hovers [where people direct their mouse pointers], clicks, and downloads," checking how customers refine searches and otherwise gathering data on what converts a search into a purchase, said Wyatt Jenkins, the company's vice president of product. "Our results are more relevant."

The formula is working, said Lee Torrens, who watches the industry closely at Microstock Diaries.

"They're innovating a lot on the buyer-side functionality, helping them catch up to iStock in terms of getting buyers to the image they're seeking as quickly as possible," Torrens said. "Overall, they're growing very quickly, remaining uniquely friendly to contributors, and pushing closer and closer towards iStock."

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the violet range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The new search techniques can appeal to different designers or to the same designer in a different mood. With the new avenues for exploration, "We see people downloading different images. It gets their creativity moving in a different direction," Oringer said. And relative use of the iPad app increases on the weekends, he added.

So far, the company's held things together in its transition from private to public. Revenue for its most recently reported quarter, ended Sept. 30, increased to $42.3 million from $31.2 million the year earlier. Net income increased from $4.3 million to $6.6 million.

Shutterstock raised $82 million in its October IPO, when the shares went public at $17 piece. Its stock now trades above $24.

Oringer has a big stake in how things go at the 250-employee company -- indeed, by owning 55.2 percent of the company's stock, a controlling stake.

Shutterstock's share price has risen to the $24 range since its IPO at $17 in October.

(Credit:
Yahoo Finance)

Stock imagery in a nutshell
Stock photos are a staple in advertisers' imagery diet -- the senior couple strolling through the park, the fit-looking woman in a yoga pose, the businesspeople shaking hands. They're used in everything from annual reports to blog posts.

A decade ago, the stock-photo business moved from the hands of a relatively small number of professional photographers to a vastly larger pool of people as digital camera image quality improved and the Internet provided a global market. Making the commerce possible were microstock start-ups, led by iStockphoto, which old-school agency Getty Images acquired in 2006.

Microstock companies offered photos for relatively cheap on a "royalty-free" basis, meaning that customers could pay once to license a photo and then use it over and over in many ways. It's a much more liberal mechanism than the traditional rights-managed approach that came before, in which photo use is limited to particular geographic regions, times, and other constraints.

There are plenty of microstock companies out there -- well established Shutterstock competitors also include Dreamstime, Fotolia, and 123RF Images. With dozens of other out there, photographers can call on even more middlemen such as PicWorkFlow that'll retouch photos, add keywords, and upload to multiple microstock agencies.

Shutterstock tries to set itself apart. One way is that doesn't try to draw contributors into exclusive partnerships that increase royalty payments if photographers sell imagery only through a single microstock.

"The bottom line is that as a microstock photographer it just doesn't make sense to be exclusive to any one agency," Oringer said in a blog post. Among the company's reasons for not offering exclusivity: "Image marketplaces that offer exclusivity to contributors must favor certain images...While other agencies sort their search results based on maximizing revenue, we maximize on search success."

Sales by subscription
Another distinguishing feature is that Shutterstock offers a subscription model. Customers that spend $249 a month (or less, if they sign up for longer periods of time) may download up to 25 images each day. Most microstocks, in contrast, sell images one at a time, an option Shutterstock also offers.

About half the company's revenue comes from subscription plans, according to the company's regulatory filings. (Video footage, a fast-growing part of the company's business, is not available through subscriptions.)

And Wall Street likes subscription businesses, with their lower churn rates.

"What makes us a good candidate for going public is we are at the core a subscription product with predictable, repeat, recurring revenue helps smooth things out on a quarter-to-quarter basis," Oringer said. "In general, we have remarkable consistency in terms of acquiring subscribers and monitoring how much they download. That's been stable. If the stability was changing, we probably would taken a different route -- gone for a more private kind of equity raise."

Shutterstock labs' Spectrum search results in the blue range for images with the keyword "healthy."

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Subscriptions might seem like a bad idea for the contributing photographers who supply Shutterstock with images. The company only passes on 25 cents per photo to photographers for a shot sold via a subscription plan, according to Shutterstock's photographer payout formula, though that rate goes up to as much as 38 cents as the photographer's lifetime photo sales increase.

In contrast, an on-demand purchase of a single image generates 81 cents to $1.24 for lower-resolution images and $1.88 to $2.85 for high resolution.

Low cost, high volume
But subscriptions can also encourage customers to loosen up, downloading images more often and not losing a lot of sleep over which one is best or over which resolution to buy, Oringer said.

"Shutterstock is selling more images than anybody else in the world," with two images downloaded each second on average, Jenkins said. "In sheer volume, we're the clear leader...The subscription is a motivator."

And of course customers who like it will continue with their subscriptions, which ultimately is good for Shutterstock contributors. Shutterstock customers who spent money in 2010 spent more than double as much in 2011, accordinging to a company regulatory filing. And from 2010 to 2011, customer growth was 71 percent. (The company hasn't yet released 2012 statistics.)

The approach is the opposite of iStockphoto's strategy, which emphasizes upselling customers to expensive images, but Torrens said it works.

"Their business model still makes them the cheapest of the cheap," Torrens said. But photographers forget about that fact, "especially when Shutterstock sends them more money at the end of the month than any other agency."

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