Guatemala Could Deport McAfee to Belize

Software anti virus pioneer John McAfee is in the process of being deported to Belize after he was arrested in Guatemala for entering the country illegally, his attorney told ABC News early Thursday.

ABC News has learned that John McAfee is scheduled to be deported to Belize later this morning. But a judge could stay the ruling if it is determined McAfee's life is threatened by being in Belizean custody, as McAfee has claimed over the past several weeks.

Just hours before McAfee's arrest, he told ABC News in an exclusive interview Wednesday he would be seeking asylum in Guatemala. McAfee was arrested by the Central American country's immigration police and not the national police, said his attorney, who was confident his client would be released within hours.

"Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity," said McAfee, 67, before his arrest. "I chose Guatemala carefully."

McAfee said that in Guatemala, the locals aren't surprised when he says the Belizean government is out to kill him.
"Instead of going, 'You're crazy,' they go, 'Yeah, of course they are,'" he said. "It's like, finally, I understand people who understand the system here."

But McAfee added he has not ruled out moving back to the United States, where he made his fortune as the inventor of anti-virus software, and that despite losing much of his fortune he still has more money than he could ever spend.
In his interview with ABC News, a jittery, animated but candid McAfee called the media's representation of him a "nightmare that is about to explode," and said he's prepared to prove his sanity.

Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images

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

John McAfee Interview: Software Mogul Leaves Belize Watch Video

John McAfee Interview: Software Millionaire on the Run Watch Video

McAfee has been on the run from police in Belize since the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull.

During his three-week journey, said McAfee, he disguised himself as handicapped, dyed his hair seven times and hid in many different places during his three-week journey.

He dismissed accounts of erratic behavior and reports that he had been using the synthetic drug bath salts. He said he had never used the drug, and said statements that he had were part of an elaborate prank.

Investigators said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of the former developer, who was found shot in the head in his house on the resort island of San Pedro, but that they wanted to question him.

McAfee told ABC News that the poisoning death of his dogs and the murder just hours later of Faull, who had complained about his dogs, was a coincidence.

McAfee has been hiding from police ever since Faull's death -- but Telesforo Guerra, McAfee's lawyer in Guatemala, said the tactic was born out of necessity, not guilt.

"You don't have to believe what the police say," Guerra told ABC News. "Even though they say he is not a suspect they were trying to capture him."

Guerra, who is a former attorney general of Guatemala, said it would take two to three weeks to secure asylum for his client.

According to McAfee, Guerra is also the uncle of McAfee's 20-year-old girlfriend, Samantha. McAfee said the government raided his beachfront home and threatened Samantha's family.

"Fifteen armed soldiers come in and personally kidnap my housekeeper, threaten Sam's father with torture and haul away half a million dollars of my s***," claimed McAfee. "If they're not after me, then why all these raids? There've been eight raids!"

Before his arrest, McAfee said he would hold a press conference on Thursday in Guatemala City to announce his asylum bid. He has offered to answer questions from Belizean law enforcement over the phone, and denied any involvement in Faull's death.

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When is a baby too premature to save?

It was never easy, but trying to decide whether to save extremely premature babies just got harder.

A study called EPICure compared the fates of babies born 22 to 26 weeks into pregnancy in the UK in 1995 with similar babies born in 2006. In this 11-year period, the babies surviving their first week rose from 40 to 53 per cent. But an accompanying study comparing the fate of survivors at age 3 found that the proportion developing severe disabilities was unchanged, at just under 1 in 5.

"We've increased survival, but it's confined to the first week of life," says Kate Costeloe of Queen Mary, University of London, author of the first study. "Yet the pattern of death and health problems is strikingly similar between the two periods."

The absolute numbers of premature babies born over the 11 year period increased by 44 per cent, from 666 in 1995 to 959 in 2006. This meant that the absolute numbers of children with severe disabilities such as blindness, deafness or lameness also rose, increasing the burden on health, educational and social services.

Lifelong disability

"As the number of children that survive preterm birth continues to rise, so will the number who experience disability throughout their lives," says Neil Marlow of University College London, who led the second study.

By far the worst outcomes were for the youngest babies, with 45 per cent of those born at 22 or 23 weeks in 2006 developing disabilities compared with 20 per cent of those born at 26 weeks. In 1995 only two babies survived after being born at 22 weeks. In 2006, three did.

In 2006, a panel of UK ethicists concluded that babies born at 22 weeks should be allowed to die, as with babies born at or before 23 weeks in France and Holland.

Journal references: BMJ, Costeloe et al, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.e7976; Marlow et al, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.e7961

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SingHealth, Australian firm explore new technology to treat cancer cells

SINGAPORE: Under a research collaboration with an Australian company called Sirtex Medical, Singapore will be the first in the world to try out a new treatment for cancer cells.

Sirtex Medical and SingHealth signed a new Master Research Collaboration Agreement where Singapore General Hospital and National Cancer Centre Singapore will explore the potential of a new technology called Carbon Cage Nanoparticles, targeting cancer cells which may be left behind after an operation.

The research will focus on abdominal cancers, starting with advanced ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in Singapore. Researchers will also try the treatment on stomach and colorectal cancers, which are also quite common in Singapore.

When removing abdominal tumours, researchers say there is always a post-surgery risk that tumour cell residues may remain in the abdominal lining.

If these tumour cells aren't eliminated, they can continue to grow to a point where it is life-threatening.

To target these cells, the new technology developed by the Australian National University carries a high dose of radiation enclosed in a carbon casing.

When injected into the abdominal cavity, the new technology can potentially kill specific cancer cells not visible to the naked eye.

Besides carrying a high dose of radiation within the carbon shell, the technology can also carry chemotherapy agents.

Previous methods of removing remaining cancer cells usually involve chemotherapy treatments after operation.

Professor Soo Khee Chee, Deputy Group CEO of SingHealth and Director of National Cancer Centre Singapore, said: "The problem with giving chemotherapy is that if you just give it orally or intravenously, they are fairly non-specific, they circulate through all the whole body and you don't achieve the concentration that is necessary to eliminate tumour cells very effectively."

In five years' time, researchers will introduce the new therapy in human trials. If successful, they say it could be used to treat diseases beyond cancer, such as with patients with immunological disorders.

- CNA/de

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Nokia puts color first with Lumia 620 Windows phone debut

Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's executive vice president of design, shows off the Lumia 620 phone at the LeWeb 2012 conference.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

PARIS --- Nokia announced a new lower-end Windows Phone today, the $249 Lumia 620, hoping customers will be drawn to its rounded corners and bright colors when it launches in January of 2013.

The Lumia 620 is a 3G model with a 3.8-inch screen, 1 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, a back camera that'll shoot 720p video, a 5-megapixel front camera for video chat, near-field communciations (NFC), and loud speakers, the company said. But Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's executive vice president of design, put the new colors front and center as he debuted the phone at the LeWeb conference here.

The phone comes in base colors, but using Nokia's "dual shot" approach, transparent but colored covers that form new color combinations.

"With the 620, we wanted to introduce some bold blends," Ahtisaari said. "We use a technique called dual-shot application of color, with an opaque layer underneath then a translucent layer above." A yellow base becomes lime green with a cyan cover and orange with a red cover, for example.

The phone will will cost $249 or about 190 euros, shipping first in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa first and other markets later, he said.

The Lumia 620, left, alongside its higher-end brethren from Nokia.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Scientific Results From Challenger Deep

Jane J. Lee

The spotlight is shining once again on the deepest ecosystems in the ocean—Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (map) and the New Britain Trench near Papua New Guinea. At a presentation today at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco, attendees got a glimpse into these mysterious ecosystems nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) down, the former visited by filmmaker James Cameron during a historic dive earlier this year.

Microbiologist Douglas Bartlett with the University of California, San Diego described crustaceans called amphipods—oceanic cousins to pill bugs—that were collected from the New Britain Trench and grow to enormous sizes five miles (eight kilometers) down. Normally less than an inch (one to two centimeters) long in other deep-sea areas, the amphipods collected on the expedition measured 7 inches (17 centimeters). (Related: "Deep-Sea, Shrimp-like Creatures Survive by Eating Wood.")

Bartlett also noted that sea cucumbers, some of which may be new species, dominated many of the areas the team sampled in the New Britain Trench. The expedition visited this area before the dive to Challenger Deep.

Marine geologist Patricia Fryer with the University of Hawaii described some of the deepest seeps yet discovered. These seeps, where water heated by chemical reactions in the rocks percolates up through the seafloor and into the ocean, could offer hints of how life originated on Earth.

And astrobiologist Kevin Hand with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, spoke about how life in these stygian ecosystems, powered by chemical reactions, could parallel the evolution of life on other planets.

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Subway Push Murder Suspect Implicated Self: Police

A suspect believed to be responsible for throwing a man into the path of an oncoming New York City subway train who was taken into custody today has made statements implicating himself, police said.

According to Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne, the suspect has been questioned by police since at least early afternoon and while the suspect is in police custody, he has not been officially charged.

Police are continuing to question the suspect and more lineups have been scheduled for tomorrow, Browne said.

Police have not released the suspect's name but began questioning him Tuesday afternoon about the death of Ki-Suck Han, 58, of Queens, N.Y.

Han was tossed onto the subway track at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue around 12:30 p.m. Monday after Han confronted a mumbling man who was alarming other passengers on the train platform. Han tried to scramble back onto the platform, but was crushed by an oncoming train.

The suspect fled the station, prompting a police dragnet for a man described by witnesses and see on surveillance video as a 6-foot-tall, 200-pound black man wearing dreadlocks in his hair.

Witnesses tried to revive the victim after he was hit and provided descriptions of the suspect to police.

Dr. Laura Kaplan, medical resident at Beth Israel Medical Center who was standing on the platform during the incident rushed to give Han aid after he was hit, she said in a statement released by her medical practice today.

New York Police Department

Bystanders Pull Mom, Son From Subway Tracks Watch Video

"A security guard and I performed 3-4 minutes of chest compressions. I hope the family may find some comfort in knowing about the kindness of these good Samaritans, as they endure this terrible loss," Kaplan said.

"I would like the family to know that many people in the station tried to help Mr. Han by alerting the subway personnel," she said.

Kaplan said she wanted to console the family of Han, who she called "a brave man trying to protect other passengers that he did not know."

The suspect had reportedly been mumbling to himself and disturbing other passengers, according to ABC News affiliate WABC. Police told WABC that the suspect could be mentally disturbed.

The suspect could be heard arguing with Han just moments before he hurled Han onto the track bed, according to surveillance video released by the police. The suspect is heard telling the victim to stand in line and "wait for the R train."

A freelance photographer for the New York Post was on the platform and said he ran towards the train flashing his camera hoping to alert the train to stop in time, but the train caught Han against the shoulder deep platform wall.

The photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, caught an eerie photo of Han with his head and arms above the platform and staring at the oncoming train.

Han was treated by EMS workers on the platform for traumatic arrest and rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Fire Department of New York.

"I just heard people yelling. The train came to an abrupt stop about three-quarters into the station and that's when I heard a man was hit by a train," Patrick Gomez told ABC News affiliate WABC.

Police set up a command post outside the train station Monday night searching nearby surveillance cameras to try and get a clear image of the suspect, reports WABC. They said Tuesday that the investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.

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2012 Flash Fiction shortlist: S3xD0ll

Each day this week we will run one of the shortlisted stories from our 2012 Fash Fiction competition. Look for the winning piece in our end-of-year issue - on news stands 22 December. The first story went up yesterday: below is the second of the five.

What our judge Alice LaPlante had to say:

Witty and structurally sophisticated, this piece also exploited tension in a way that kept readers on their toes.

S3xD0ll

By Kevlin Henney

Trouble. Big trouble. Big luscious lips and deep sensual eyes, staring at me. Big, deep and up-to-my-neck-in-it trouble.

Cath is due back any minute. Enough time to contrive an apology, but not enough to undo this mess.

"Don't spend all morning surfing dodgy sites." She winked as she headed for the door. "You need to buy milk and something for dinner. Speaking of surfing, don't forget to renew the firewall and anti-virus subscription; it expired yesterday. I'll be back at two to print out my portfolio."

I should have got my act together and headed out to the shops immediately, renewing the subscription on my return, rewarding myself with a coffee. The rest of the day would have been mine to squander. Should have... but as the door closed, my subconscious had already prioritised surfing with coffee over shopping and subscription renewal.

OK, I'll admit I may have looked at some sites that had nothing to do with my thesis write-up... including a couple that didn't involve pictures of cats. I was tempted to renew the subscription as further procrastination, but it was midday and the high street would be busy, getting busier.

Well, I've just renewed the sub and scanned and fixed the PC, but that's locking the barn door after the horse has bolted and the printer cartridges have emptied. How was I to know one of those sites had the S3xD0ll virus?

When I got back from the shops I thought Cath had returned early because the printer was chuntering away in the background. Cheap 3D printers have knocked the low end out of the consumer products market, with open-sourced and pirated designs online further squeezing the product designer jobs market. Cath, however, has secured an interview and she was going to print out some of her work to take along. In preparation she'd bought litres of plastic and metal powders... now used up. In their place I have a life-sized animatronic sex doll to explain away. Big luscious lips and deep sensual eyes, staring at me with preprogrammed expectation.

And that's the front door.

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Congratulations pour in for William and Kate's pregnancy

LONDON: Messages of congratulations poured in from around the world on Tuesday on news that Prince William's wife Kate is pregnant, as she spent a second day in hospital suffering from acute morning sickness.

The announcement on Monday that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, both 30, are expecting their first child ended feverish speculation about a new royal heir that began immediately after their lavish wedding in April 2011.

The child, to be born next summer, will be third in line to the throne regardless of whether it is a girl or a boy, after a historic agreement among Commonwealth countries last year to end the practice of male primogeniture.

St James' Palace said Kate was still at the "very early stages" of pregnancy -- she is believed to be less than 12 weeks -- but it is thought the news was released because her admission to hospital would have made her condition public.

Kate has hyperemesis gravidarum, a very acute form of morning sickness which affects 3.5 in every 1,000 pregnant women.

Although it is not dangerous for the baby, it can be highly unpleasant for the mother as it causes severe vomiting and carries a danger of dehydration and nutritional deficiencies.

William, the second in line to the throne after his father Prince Charles, was at his wife's bedside at the private King Edward VII hospital in central London on Monday.

He left without a comment or even a smile for the banks of waiting cameras, although his wife is expected to remain in hospital for several days.

There was reportedly a rush to inform members of the royal family of the news before the public announcement on Monday.

Queen Elizabeth II, her husband Prince Philip, Prince Charles -- for whom this is his first grandchild -- and his wife Camilla were said by the palace to be "delighted with the news", as were Kate's parents, Carole and Michael Middleton.

William's brother Prince Harry, 28, who will be bumped down a place in the line of succession by the new arrival, was reportedly informed by email in Afghanistan, where he is deployed as an Apache helicopter pilot.

The palace said the couple only "recently" became aware that Kate was pregnant although there has been speculation for months, fuelled by images of the duchess sipping water instead of wine at official dinners.

She showed no sign of being ill at a public engagement on Friday, however, when she showed off her hockey skills at her old primary school in high-heeled boots and an Alexander McQueen tartan coat.

All her public engagements for the coming weeks have been cancelled.

News of the pregnancy sparked huge excitement in the British press, although it was tempered with concern about Kate's condition, as well as messages of goodwill from around the world.

Prime Minister David Cameron, a father of four who was informed a short time before the public announcement, led the congratulations by saying the royal couple would make "wonderful parents".

US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, who met William and Kate during a state visit to Britain last year, sent their congratulations on the "welcome news", the White House said.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the news "is going to bring joy to many around the world", while her New Zealand counterpart John Key said the news was "fabulous".

New Zealand had led a push for Commonwealth nations to scrap centuries-old laws barring first-born daughters from inheriting the throne and the grouping agreed to the reform last year at a meeting in the Australian city of Perth.

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg confirmed on Monday that the government was putting "the finishing touches" to legislation enshrining the new rules of succession, something he said was a "big, big change".

The Sun celebrated the news on Tuesday with the headline "Kate Expectations" while The Daily Telegraph said the news was cause for national celebration.

"Who would not be delighted at the prospect of a mother's first child, especially a mother who has won affection with her natural beauty and straightforward character?" said its editorial.

Kate, a "commoner" whose parents are self-made millionaires from a party supplies business, met William at St Andrews University in Scotland in 2001.

- AFP/jc

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Nest CEO Fadell: Internet of things is a decade away

Tony Fadell, CEO and founder of Nest Labs, speaking at LeWeb 2012.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

PARIS -- It will take 10 years before the "Internet of things" catches on widely, said Nest Labs Chief Executive Tony Fadell, whose smart-thermostat startup embodies the technology.

"People think there's this Internet of all kinds of crazy devices that are going to talk to each other. It's going to take some time," Fadell said at the LeWeb show here. "Give it five or eight years and then you'll see machines talking to machines. Then it'll be commonplace in ten years or so."

The Internet of things is the idea that networked computing will spread far beyond today's computers and smartphones to things like refrigerators, light bulbs, traffic lights, and really just about anything. It's a real phenomenon, but it's not clear yet how far it will extend beyond straightforward devices like
cars to sci-fi scenarios like bloodstream nanobots.

Fadell, of course, believes the thermostat is ready to plug into the Internet of things, enabling people to control it remotely and for it to tap into weather reports. Nest announced its second-generation thermostat in October, a slimmer model Fadell hopes will find a foothold in a large market.

"The thermostat market is larger than stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, and they're such an energy consumer," with home heating and cooling using more than half of a house's energy, he said. "Nobody has innovated it for 20 or 30 years."

Fadell, "father of the iPod," during his days at Apple, has tried to bring some of his former employer's design sensibility and obsessive customer focus to the thermostat business. And it's brought some of Apple's secrecy, too.

"A startup is about being fast, stealthy, and being ready to sell it right when people are ready to buy it," Fadell said. "That secrecy makes people excited when it comes out" -- which is especially useful with something as mundane as a thermostat.

Asked his opinion about Google's networked eyewear, Project Glass, Fadell said, "It's the next logical extent" for mobile computing, something he believes will be connected to a mobile phone rather than a standalone computing device.

He's intrigued but not yet convinced of its merits, saying it's not clear whether it's transformative technology like the iPhone or arriving before the market is ready for it. And it's got a social hurdle to overcome.

"I'm still getting used to somebody talking to me wearing it," Fadell said.

Though enthusiastic about launching a startup, he was leery of one particular mechanism popular today, Kickstarter. That site ltes interested potential customers directly fund new ideas.

"I'm very positive on kickstarter to find the audience for books and things easier to produce," Fadell said. However, "the hardware things are difficult, and you have to look at how hard they are to produce to see if they're going to come to light. It's when it goes to the mass public, and the mass public demands they have the product and they don't receive it, that's the bad part."

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Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.

Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously in polar Mars—appeared to also be present in Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity's exploration.

The possible discovery of organics—or carbon-based compounds bonded to hydrogen, also called hydrocarbons—could have major implications for the mission's search for more complex organic material.

It would not necessarily mean that life exists now or ever existed on Mars, but it makes the possibility of Martian life—especially long ago when the planet was wetter and warmer—somewhat greater, since available carbon is considered to be so important to all known biology.

(See "Mars Curiosity Rover Finds Proof of Flowing Water—A First.")

The announcements came after several weeks of frenzied speculation about a "major discovery" by Curiosity on Mars. But project scientist John Grotzinger said that it remains too early to know whether Martian organics have been definitely discovered or if they're byproducts of contamination brought from Earth.

"When this data first came in, and then was confirmed in a second sample, we did have a hooting and hollering moment," he said.

"The enthusiasm we had was perhaps misunderstood. We're doing science at the pace of science, but news travels at a different speed."

Organics Detected Before on Mars

The organic compounds discovered—different combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine—are the same or similar to chlorinated organics detected in the mid-1970s by the Viking landers.

(Related: "Life on Mars Found by NASA's Viking Mission?")

At the time, the substances were written off as contamination brought from Earth, but now scientists know more about how the compounds could be formed on Mars. The big question remains whether the carbon found in the compounds is of Martian or Earthly origin.

Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the instrument that may have found the simple organics—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)—said that while the findings were not "definitive," they were significant and would require a great deal of further study.

Mahaffy also said the discovery came as a surprise, since the soil sample involved was hardly a prime target in the organics search. In fact, the soil was scooped primarily to clean out the rover's mobile laboratory and soil-delivery systems.

Called Rocknest, the site is a collection of rocks with rippled sand around them—an environment not considered particularly promising for discovery. The Curiosity team has always thought it had a much better chance of finding the organics in clays and sulfate minerals known to be present at the base of Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, where the rover will head early next year.

(See the Mars rover Curiosity's first color pictures.)

The rover has been at Rocknest for a month and has scooped sand and soil five times. It was the first site where virtually all the instruments on Curiosity were used, Grotzinger said, and all of them proved to be working well.

They also worked well in unison—with one instrument giving the surprising signal that the minerals in the soil were not all crystalline, which led to the intensive examination of the non-crystalline portion to see if it contained any organics.

Rover Team "Very Confident"

The simple organics detected by SAM were in the chloromethane family, which contains compounds that are sometimes used to clean electronic equipment. Because it was plausible that Viking could have brought the compounds to Mars as contamination, that conclusion was broadly accepted.

But in 2010, Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico published an influential paper describing how dichloromethane can be a byproduct of the heating of other organic material in the presence of the compound perchlorate.

They conducted the experiment because NASA's Phoenix mission had discovered large amounts of perchlorate in the northern polar soil of Mars, and it seems plausible that it would exist elsewhere on the planet.

"In terms of the SAM results, there are two important conclusions," said McKay, a scientist on the SAM team.

"The first is confirming the perchlorate story—that it's most likely there and seems to react at high temperatures with organic material to form the dichloromethane and other simple organics."

"The second is that we'll have to either find organics without perchlorates nearby, or find a way to get around that perchlorate wall that keeps us from identifying organics," he said.

Another SAM researcher, Danny Glavin of Goddard, said his team is "very confident" about the reported detection of the hydrocarbons, and that they were produced in the rover's ovens. He said it is clear that the chlorine in the compounds is from Mars, but less clear about the carbon.

"We will figure out what's going on here," he said. "We have the instruments and we have the people. And whatever the final conclusions, we will have learned important things about Mars that we can use in the months ahead."

Author of the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012, Marc Kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including the past 12 as a science and space writer, foreign correspondent, and editor for the Washington Post. He is also author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, published in 2011, and has spoken extensively to crowds across the United States and abroad about astrobiology. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lynn Litterine.

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