WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:01pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has cleared the way for wider adoption of in-flight Internet services, aiming to cut by as much as 50 percent the time needed for regulatory approval.

Newly adopted rules should boost competition in this part of the U.S. mobile telecommunications market and promote "the widespread availability of Internet access to aircraft passengers," the FCC said in a statement Friday.

Since 2001, the commission has cleared companies on an ad hoc basis to market in-flight broadband services via a satellite antenna fixed to an aircraft's exterior.

Under a newly adopted framework, the licensing procedures will be simpler, the commission said.

Airlines will be able to test systems that meet the commission's standards, establish that they do not interfere with aircraft systems and then get approval of the Federal Aviation Administration, the FCC statement said.

The FAA, a Labor Department arm responsible for operating the nation's air traffic control system, said in response that the FCC's effort to establish standards "will help to streamline the process" for airlines to install Internet hookups on planes.

The goal is to speed the processing of applications by up to 50 percent, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a separate statement.

The FCC drive to promote broadband aboard planes does not change a ban on the in-flight use of cell phones, which is tied to concerns about interference with ground stations.

Genachowski earlier this month urged the Federal Aviation Administration to allow more electronics on aircraft.

The FAA announced in August that it was forming a government-industry group to study aircraft operators' policies to determine when portable electronic devices may be used safely during flight.

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

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ZTE company logos are seen at an international software and information services exhibition in Nanjing, Jiangsu province September 6, 2012.

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A photo illustration shows the applications Facebook and Instagram on the screen of an iPhone in Zagreb April 9, 2012.

SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Dec 28, 2012 5:02pm EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's Instagram lost almost a quarter of its daily users a week after it rolled out and then withdrew policy changes that incensed users who feared the photo-sharing service would use their pictures without compensation.

Instagram, which Facebook bought for $715 million this year, saw the number of daily active users who accessed the service via Facebook bottom out at 12.4 million as of Friday, versus a peak of 16.4 million last week, according to data compiled by online tracker AppData.

The popular app, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them over the Internet or smartphones, experienced the drop over the brief, often-volatile holiday period.

Other popular apps also saw slippage in usage, and some were more pronounced. Yelp, for instance, saw daily active users -- again via Facebook -- slide to a weekly low of half a million on Thursday, from a high of 820,000 one week ago.

Instagram disputed the AppData survey, which was compiled from users that have linked the photo service to their own Facebook accounts, historically between 20 and 30 percent of Instagram members.

"This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram," a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Friday.

Looking out over a broader timeframe, Instagram's monthly active users edged up to 43.6 million as of Friday, an increase of 1.7 million over the past seven days, according to AppData.

"We'll have to monitor the data over the coming weeks to gain perspective on trends in Instagram's performance," AppData marketing manager Ashley Taylor Anderson said in an email.

ATTENTION-SEEKING

The sharp slide in activity highlighted by AppData was bound to draw attention on the heels of the controversial revision to Instagram's terms of service that, among other things, allowed an advertiser to pay Instagram "to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)" without compensation.

The subsequent public outrage prompted an apology from Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. Last week, a California Instagram user sued the company for breach of contract and other claims, in what may have been the first civil lawsuit to stem from the controversial change.

Instagram subsequently reverted to some of its original language.

The move renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

Analysts say Facebook, the world's largest social network, was laying the groundwork to begin generating advertising revenue, by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information, such as who users follow in advertisements.

Its shares closed down 13 cents or 0.5 percent at $25.91 on the Nasdaq, in line with the broader market.

(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay)

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LONDON | Thu Dec 27, 2012 10:47am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - An ambitious British plan to search for minute forms of life in an ancient lake beneath Antarctica's ice has been suspended because of technical problems, the scientist leading the project said on Thursday.

In a move that clears the way for U.S. and Russian teams to take the lead, Professor Martin Siegert said technical problems and a lack of fuel had forced the closure on Christmas Day of the 7-million-pound ($11 million) project, which was looking for life forms and climate change clues in the lake-bed sediment.

"This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year," said Siegert of the University of Bristol, principal investigator for the mission, which was headed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"By the end, the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field-tested," he said on the BAS website.

Experts from Britain's Lake Ellsworth mission had expected to find minute forms of life in the lake three km (two miles) under Antarctica's ice, the most remote and extreme environment known on Earth.

They had also hoped that by dating bits of seashell found in the water they would have been able to ascertain when the ice sheet last broke up and to better understand the risks of it happening again.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Scientists from the United States and Russia are hot on Britain's heels when it comes to drilling through Antarctic ice to lakes that have been hidden for thousands of years.

The U.S. team is aiming to start drilling in Lake Whillans, one of 360 known sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica, in January or February 2013.

Russia was the first to pierce 3,769 meters (12,365 ft) of solid ice to reach Lake Vostok early in 2012. But some scientists believe their samples may have been contaminated by drilling fluids.

The British scientists decided to abandon the mission after trying for 20 hours to connect two holes in the ice that were needed for the hot-water drill to work, said a BAS spokeswoman.

Without a connection between the two holes, the hot water would seep into the porous surface layers of ice and be lost, reducing the pressure and rendering the drill ineffective.

The team tried to melt and dig more snow to compensate for the water loss, but without success.

As a result of the extra time taken to fix the problem, fuel stocks had been depleted to such a level as to make the operation unviable.

Asked how long the delay might be before the project could be resumed, Siegert told the BBC: "It will take a season or two to get all our equipment out of Antarctica and back to the UK, so at a minimum we're looking at three to four, maybe five years I would have thought."

However, he said he felt this year's mission had not been a complete loss.

The BAS spokeswoman said: "It's very possible that either the U.S. or Russia may take the lead but I think the one thing we've learned here is that anything can go wrong."

"We've never depicted this as a race. All sub-glacial lakes would give different information," she said.

(Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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MOSCOW | Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:43pm EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The country that oversaw the launch of the world's first artificial satellite hopes to regain some of its former glory with a big boost in space spending announced by Russia on Thursday after a series of failures.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan to spend 2.1 trillion roubles ($68.71 billion) on developing Russia's space industry from 2013 to 2020, state-run RIA news agency reported.

"The programme will enable our country to effectively participate in forward-looking projects, such as the International Space Station (ISS), the study of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies in the solar system," Medvedev was quoted as saying.

Despite the launch by the former Soviet Union of Sputnik 1 in 1957, triggering the Cold War space race, Russia's space programme has suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in the past year.

These have mostly involved unmanned missions such as satellite launches, that industry veterans blame on a decade of crimped budgets and a brain drain.

Russia budgeted about 100 billion roubles ($3.3 billion) for space programmes annually in 2010 and 2011, far less than the yearly average of the amount Medvedev announced, but he said some of the money would come from outside the state budget.

The failure of a workhorse Proton rocket after launch in August caused the multimillion-dollar loss of an Indonesian and a Russian satellite. A similar problem caused the loss of a $265 million communications satellite last year.

Medvedev criticized the state of the industry in August, saying problems were costing Russia prestige and money.

Since the retirement of its space shuttle fleet last year, U.S. space agency NASA has been relying on Russia to take astronauts to the ISS at a cost of $60 million each, and plans to continue until its own new craft is developed in 2017.

($1 = 30.5645 Russian roubles)

(Reporting By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Actress January Jones, from the drama series ''Mad Men,'' arrives at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, September 23, 2012.

LONDON | Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:10am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - Pop guru Simon Cowell carries pocket-sized inhalable oxygen shots, America's "Mad Men" actress January Jones favors dried placenta pills, and British soap star Patsy Palmer rubs coffee granules into her skin.

Celebrities rarely shy away from public peddling of dubious ideas about health and science, and 2012 was no exception.

In its annual list of the year's worst abuses against science, the Sense About Science (SAS) campaign also named former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney for spreading misinformation about windows on planes, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for false justifications for peeing in the pool.

To help set the record straight, SAS, a charity dedicated to helping people make sense of science and evidence, invited qualified scientists to respond to some of the wilder pseudo-scientific claims put about by the rich and famous.

It suggested Romney, who wondered aloud in September why aircraft crews don't just open the windows when there's a fire on board, should listen to aeronautical engineer Jakob Whitfield:

"Unfortunately, Mitt, opening a window at height wouldn't do much good," the scientist said. "In fact, if you could open a window whilst in flight, the air would rush out...because air moves from the high pressure cabin to the lower pressure outside, probably causing further injury and damage."

January Jones's dried placenta pills, which the actress admitted in March she consumed after giving birth, win no favor with Catherine Collins, principal dietician at St George's Hospital in London.

"Nutritionally, there's nothing to be gained from eating your placenta - raw, cooked, or dried," Collins said. "Apart from iron, which can be easily found in other dietary choices or supplements, your placenta will provide toxins and other unsavory substances it had successfully prevented from reaching your baby in utero."

Gary Moss, a pharmaceutical scientist, patiently points out to Palmer that while caffeine may have an effect on cellulite, rubbing coffee granules into the skin is unlikely to work, since the caffeine can't escape the granules to penetrate the skin.

Phelps's claim that it's fine to pee in the pool because "chlorine kills it" is put straight by biochemist Stuart Jones, who reminds him that "urine is essentially sterile so there isn't actually anything to kill in the first place".

And for Cowell, Kay Mitchell a scientist at the Centre for Altitude Space and Extreme Environment Medicine warns that very high levels of oxygen can in fact be toxic - particularly in the lungs, where oxygen levels are highest.

"Celebrity comments travel far and fast, so it's important that they talk sense," said Sense About Science's managing director Tracey Brown. "The implausible and frankly dangerous claims about how to avoid cancer, improve skin or lose weight are becoming ever more ridiculous. And unfortunately they have a much higher profile than the research and evidence."

To encourage more vigilance among celebrity pseudo-scientists in the future, SAS provided a checklist of "misleading science claims" it suggests should be avoided:

* "Immune boosting" - you can't and you don't need to

* "Detox" - your liver does this

* "Superfood" - there is no such thing, just foods that are high in some nutrients

* "Oxygenating" - your lungs do this

* "Cleansing" - you shouldn't be trying to cleanse anything other than your skin or hair.

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Fri Dec 28, 2012 5:29pm EST

n">(Reuters) - A comet blazing toward Earth could outshine the full moon when it passes by at the end of next year - if it survives its close encounter with the sun.

The recently discovered object, known as comet ISON, is due to fly within 1.2 million miles (1.9 million km) from the center of the sun on November 28, 2013 said astronomer Donald Yeomans, head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

As the comet approaches, heat from the sun will vaporize ices in its body, creating what could be a spectacular tail that is visible in Earth's night sky without telescopes or even binoculars from about October 2013 through January 2014.

If the comet survives, that is.

Comet ISON could break apart as it nears the sun, or it could fail to produce a tail of ice particles visible from Earth.

Celestial visitors like Comet ISON hail from the Oort Cloud, a cluster of frozen rocks and ices that circle the sun about 50,000 times farther away than Earth's orbit. Every so often, one will be gravitationally bumped out from the cloud and begin a long solo orbit around the sun.

On September 21, two amateur astronomers from Russia spotted what appeared to be a comet in images taken by a 16-inch (0.4-meter) telescope that is part of the worldwide International Scientific Optical Network, or ISON, from which the object draws its name.

"The object was slow and had a unique movement. But we could not be certain that it was a comet because the scale of our images are quite small and the object was very compact," astronomer Artyom Novichonok, one of the discoverers, wrote in a comets email list hosted by Yahoo.

Novichonok and co-discoverer Vitali Nevski followed up the next night with a bigger telescope at the Maidanak Observatory in Uzbekistan. Other astronomers did likewise, confirming the object, located beyond Jupiter's orbit in the constellation Cancer, was indeed a comet.

"It's really rare, exciting," Novichonok wrote.

Comet ISON's path is very similar to a comet that passed by Earth in 1680, one which was so bright its tail reportedly could be seen in daylight.

The projected orbit of comet ISON is so similar to the 1680 comet that some scientists are wondering if they are fragments from a common parent body.

"Comet ISON…could be the brightest comet seen in many generations - brighter even than the full moon," wrote British astronomer David Whitehouse in The Independent.

In 2013, Earth has two shots at a comet show. Comet Pan-STARRS is due to pass by the planet in March, eight months before ISON's arrival.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover may be able to provide a preview.

Comet ISON is due to pass by the red planet in September and could be a target for the rover from its vantage point inside Gale Crater.

The last comet to dazzle Earth's night-time skies was Comet Hale-Bopp, which visited in 1997. Comet 17P/Holmes made a brief appearance in 2007.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Leslie Gevirtz)

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A White Rhino and her calf walk in the dusk light in Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa's North West Province April 19, 2012.

JOHANNESBURG | Thu Dec 27, 2012 5:56am EST

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Africa's biggest animals were poached in near record numbers in 2012, with surging demand for horn and ivory from Asia driving the slaughter of rhinos and elephants.

By mid-December, poachers had killed 633 rhinos in South Africa, according to environment ministry figures.

That marks a new annual peak in the country that is home to most of the continent's rhinos, and a sharp rise from the record 448 poached last year and the mere handful of deaths recorded a decade ago.

Elsewhere in Africa, the slaughter of elephants continued unabated, with mass killings reported in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to conservation group TRAFFIC, which monitors global trade in animals and plants, the amount of ivory seized will likely drop from 2011, when a record number of big hauls were made globally. But the trend remains grim.

"It looks like 2012 is another bumper year for trade in illegal ivory though it is unlikely to top 2011," said Tom Milliken, who manages TRAFFIC's Elephant Trade Information System.

In 2011, an estimated 40 metric tons of illegal ivory was seized worldwide, representing thousands of dead elephants. So far this year about 28 metric tons has reportedly been seized but the number is expected to climb as more data comes in.

"The last four years since 2009 are four of our five highest volume years in illegal ivory trade," said Milliken.

Demand for ivory as ornamental items is rising fast in Asia, in tandem with growing Chinese influence and investment in Africa, which has opened the door wider for illicit trade in elephants and other animals.

Rhino horn has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, where it was ground into powder to treat a range of maladies including rheumatism, gout and even possession by devils.

WAR AND ORGANISED CRIME

Ivory smuggling has also been linked to conflict, and last week the United Nations Security Council called for an investigation into the alleged involvement in the trade of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.

Led by warlord Joseph Kony, who is being hunted by an African Union and U.S.-backed military force, the LRA is accused of terrorizing the country's north for over 20 years through the abduction of children to use as fighters and sex slaves.

"The illegal killings of large number of elephants for their ivory are increasingly involving organized crime and in some cases well armed rebel militias," the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said in a statement this week.

"In Bouba N'Djida National Park, in northern Cameroon, up to 450 elephants were allegedly killed by groups from Chad and the Sudan early this year," said CITES, which is an international agreement that oversees trade in wildlife.

In the case of rhino horn, demand has also been growing in Vietnam, where a newly affluent class has been buying it to treat ailments ranging from hangovers to cancer.

The claims have no basis in science but demand has pushed the price of the horn up to $65,000 a kilogram on the streets of Hanoi, making it more expensive than gold.

Most of the rhino killings take place in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Gangs armed with firearms and night-vision goggles enter from neighboring Mozambique, from where observers say the horn is often smuggled out through the same routes used to bring illegal drugs from Southeast Asia into Africa.

"Kruger is a national park the size of Israel and it is incredibly difficult to police," said Julian Rademeyer, author of 'Killing for Profit', a book published this year that examines the international rhino horn trade.

"You have very advanced international syndicates run like business operations that are very good at getting horn out of here," he told Reuters. Rademeyer expects the number of rhino killings to rise even higher next year, pushing the population closer to a tipping point that leads to its decline.

South Africa has deployed its military to patrol Kruger while its tax agency SARS and police have stepped up the fight.

But it also lost ground in 2012 due to a two-month strike by National Park workers and corruption within the ranks of the park service that undermined its anti-poaching efforts.

South Africa hosts virtually the entire population of white rhino - 18,800 head or 93 percent - and about 40 percent of Africa's much rarer black rhino.

Africa's elephant population varies. Estimates for the numbers in Botswana are as high as 150,000 but in parts of central and west Africa the animal is highly endangered.

"Central Africa has been bleeding ivory but for the last few years there has also been an upsurge in poaching in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique," said Milliken.

Trade in rhino horn is strictly prohibited under CITES while that for ivory is mostly illegal.

(Editing by John Stonestreet)

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BEIJING | Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:43am EST

BEIJING (Reuters) - China plans to release hourly air pollution monitoring data in 74 of its biggest cities starting on New Year's Day, state media said on Sunday, in a sign of increasing responsiveness to quality-of-life concerns among prosperous urban people.

Choking pollution and murky grey skies in Chinese cities is a top gripe among both Chinese and expatriates.

Microscopic pollutant particles in the air have killed about 8,600 people prematurely this year and cost $1 billion in economic losses in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi'an, according to a study by Beijing University and Greenpeace that measured the pollutant levels of PM2.5, or particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

The new monitoring will include not only PM2.5, but also sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide, the Xinhua news agency said, citing a Friday announcement by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Data will be collected from 496 monitoring stations, it said.

First Beijing, then other cities have become more public about their air quality data since the U.S. embassy in Beijing began publishing hourly data from a pollution monitor installed on embassy grounds in Beijing.

The embassy's monitor often diverged with official air quality readings, adding to public pressure for the city to come clean about the state of its air.

The United States has extended its monitoring program to its consulates in China.

Sunday was a clear and sunny winter day in Beijing, with the levels of ozone and PM2.5 declared "moderate" or "good", according to embassy data. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center (www.bjmemc.com.cn) rated PM10 concentrations as "excellent".

Many Chinese cities have removed belching smokestacks and coal-burning factories from their centers in the past few years, but a rise in the number of cars during the same period has created new air quality problems.

(Reporting By Lucy Hornby; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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1 of 13. A deceased beached whale lies on a beach with the skyline of New York rising behind it in the Queens borough region of Breezy Point, New York, December 27, 2012. A 60-foot finback whale that washed up on a beach in New York City on Wednesday has died, a marine rescue official said on Thursday.

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:59pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 60-foot whale that washed up on a beach in New York City on Wednesday has died, a marine rescue official said on Thursday.

The finback whale had appeared on the beach in New York's Breezy Point neighborhood and marine conservationists had been fearful for its survival. Breezy Point, in the borough of Queens, faces the Atlantic Ocean and was devastated by flooding and fire in superstorm Sandy in October.

"Biologists have confirmed that the whale has died," said Mendy Garron, a marine mammal rescue specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Plans are currently being developed for necropsy and disposal of the carcass."

The finback is the second largest marine mammal species after the blue whale, according to the NOAA Fisheries website. An adult can reach 85 feet and weigh up to 80 tons, although northern hemisphere finbacks tend to be somewhat smaller than their southern cousins. Typical lifespan is 80 to 90 years.

(Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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