IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.
Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.
Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"
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LAHAD DATU, Malaysia - A Malaysian policeman was killed by "militants" in a region where Filipino followers of a self-claimed sultan are holed up in a deadly standoff with security forces, state media reported Sunday.
The police officer was killed when he was fired upon on Saturday in the Malaysian town of Semporna, 300 kilometres by road from the site of the standoff at Tanduo village on Borneo island where 12 Filipino intruders and two police died in a firefight the day before.
State news agency Bernama also said another officer suffered gunshot wounds.
It quoted police saying the killing was unrelated to the nearly three-week siege involving armed intruders who arrived from the Philippines by boat to press the "sultan's" historical claim to the area.
But the latest shooting raised fears on Malaysian social media sites of a possible spread of violence by suspected sympathisers of the group.
An estimated 100-300 Filipinos have been surrounded in a farming village by a Malaysian police and military cordon since landing by boat from the nearby Philippines to insist the area belongs to their Islamic leader Jamalul Kiram III's.
Kiram, 74, claims to be the heir to the Islamic sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of the southern Philippines and Borneo.
Following Friday's firefight, Malaysian police stepped up threats to clear them out unless they surrendered immediately.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who has sharply criticised the intruders, also urged them to surrender unconditionally, but a spokesman for Kiram has said his followers were prepared to die.
The Sulu sultanate's power faded about a century ago but it has continued to receive nominal payments from Malaysia for Sabah under a historical lease arrangement passed down from European colonial powers.
N'DJAMENA, Chad Chad's military chief announced late Saturday that his troops deployed in northern Mali had killed Moktar Belmoktar, the terrorist who orchestrated the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that left 37 foreigners dead.
The French military, which is leading the offensive against al Qaeda-linked rebels in Mali, said they could not immediately confirm the information.
Play Video
Americans in Algeria: Surviving a terrorist attack
Known as the "one-eyed," Belmoktar's profile soared after the mid-January attack and mass hostage-taking on a huge Algerian gas plant.
Mark Cobb, one of the five Americans who survived the attack, spoke to "60 Minutes" contributor Charlie Rose in an interview broadcast on CBS last month.
"I knew as the highest-ranking American on the site, I would be a prize," Cobb told Rose. "They put the highest value on American hostages, British hostages and French hostages. I heard them kick open the front door. That's I guess at the point where in all honesty I would say I felt pure terror."
Cobb escaped through a hole in the perimeter fence.
Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was his hostage in 2008.
"He's very tough," Fowler told CBS News. "He seems physically demanding. He demands a lot of his people and therefore, yes, I'd say he's a tough enemy."
Multinational forces have been looking for Belmoktar. CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports the United States is flying drones in the area.
Local officials in Kidal, the northern town that is being used as the base for the military operation, cast doubt on the assertion, telling The Associated Press that Chadian officials are attempting to score a PR victory to make up for the significant losses they have suffered in recent days.
Belmoktar's purported death comes a day after Chad's president said his troops had killed Abou Zeid, the other main al Qaeda commander operating in northern Mali.
If both deaths are confirmed, it would mean that the international intervention in Mali had succeeded in decapitating two of the pillars of al Qaeda in the Sahara.
"Chad's armed forces in Mali have completely destroyed a base used by jihadists and narcotraffickers in the Adrar and Ifoghas mountains" of northern Mali, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Zakaria Ngobongue said in a televised statement on state-owned National Chadian Television. "The provisional toll is as follows: Several terrorists killed, including Moktar Belmoktar."
The French military moved into Mali on Jan. 11 to push back militants linked to Belmoktar and Abou Zeid and other extremist groups who had imposed harsh Islamic rule in the north of the vast country and who were seen as an international terrorist threat.
Play Video
Historical documents saved during Mali's invasion
France is trying to rally other African troops to help in the military campaign, since Mali's military is weak and poor. Chadian troops have offered the most robust reinforcement.
In Paris, French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said that he had "no information" on the possibility that Belmoktar was dead. The Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny the report.
A spokesman for Chad's presidential palace did not immediately return a request for comment.
In Kidal in northern Mali, an elected official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told the AP that he did not believe that Belmoktar was dead and waved off the claim as an attempt by Chad to explain the loss of dozens of their troops to a grieving nation.
"These last few weeks, the Chadians have lost a significant number of soldiers in combat. (Claiming that they killed Belmoktar) is a way to give some importance to their intervention in Mali," said the official, who keeps in close contact with both French and Malian commanders in the field.
Play Video
Who is the man behind attack in Algeria?
Belmoktar, an Algerian, is believed to be in his 40s, and like his sometimes partner and sometimes rival, Abou Zeid, he began on the path to terrorism after Algeria's secular government voided the 1991 election won by an Islamic party.
Both men joined the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, and later its offshoot, the GSPC, a group that carried out suicide bombings on Algerian government targets.
Around 2003, both men crossed into Mali, where they began a lucrative kidnapping business, snatching European tourists, aid workers, government employees and even diplomats and holding them for multimillion-dollar ransoms.
The Algerian terror cell amassed a significant war chest, and joined the al Qaeda fold in 2006, renaming itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Belmoktar claims he trained in Afghanistan in the 1990s, including in one of Osama Bin Laden's camps. It was there that he reportedly lost an eye, earning him the nickname "Laaouar," Arabic for "one-eyed."
Until last December, Belmoktar and Abou Zeid headed separate brigades under the flag of al Qaeda's chapter in the Sahara. But after months of reports of infighting between the two, Belmoktar peeled off, announcing the creation of his own terror unit, still loyal to the al Qaeda ideology but separate from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
It was this group that launched the fatal attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in southeastern Algeria in retaliation for the French-led military intervention in Mali.
In the attack and in the subsequent rescue attempt, 37 people were killed inside the complex. Belmoktar claimed responsibility for the attack within hours, immediately catapulting him into the ranks of international terrorists.
In addition to the alleged killing of Belmoktar, Ngobongue said that Chad's military had also nabbed 60 of the jihadists' cars, electronic equipment and weapons. "The raid is still ongoing," he said.
American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.
If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat in northern Africa.
Belmokhtar's killing was announced on Chadian national television by armed forces spokesperson Gen. Zacharia Gobongue, who said Chadian troops "operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base."
"The [death] toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar," he said.
However, an unidentified elected official in Mali told The Associated Press he doubted Belmokhtar had actually been killed and said he suspected the Chadian government of pushing the story to ease the loss of dozens of Chadian troops in operations in northern Africa.
SITE Intel Group/AP Photo
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Belmokhtar is known as Mr. Marlboro because of the millions he made smuggling cigarettes across the Sahara, but in the last few months the one-eyed terrorist leader has become one of the most sought after terrorists in the world. The attack on the plant near In Amenas in eastern Algeria left dozens of Westerns and at least three Americans dead.
Belmokhtar had formed his own al Qaeda splinter group and announced he would use his wealth to finance more attacks against American and Western interests in the region and beyond.
The U.S. has badly wanted Belmokhtar stopped and actively helped in the search by French and African military units to find him, as well as another top al Qaeda leader who was reported killed yesterday.
After the Chadian announcement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Belmokhtar's death, if confirmed, "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."
Steve Wysocki, a plant worker who survived the attack in In Amenas thanked "military forces from around the world," especially the Chadian military, for bringing "this terrorist to an expedient justice."
"My family and I continue to mourn for our friends and colleagues who didn't make it home and pray for their families," Wysocki told ABC News.
The CIA has been after Belmokhtar since the early 1990s, Royce's statement said.
ABC News' Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.
IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.
Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.
Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
WASHINGTON: Major budget cuts will endanger the US military's ability to conduct its missions, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel warned.
His comments came hours before President Barack Obama authorized cuts in domestic and defence spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit.
Hagel, whose budget at the Pentagon is set to be slashed by roughly $46 billion, said earlier: "Let me make it clear that this uncertainty puts at risk our ability to effectively fulfil all of our missions."
In contrast with his predecessor Leon Panetta, who branded the cuts a "doomsday mechanism" and "fiscal castration," Hagel was more measured two days after taking office as defence secretary.
But he made clear his thoughts on the consequences of the so-called "sequester" on the military.
Defence officials say they will be forced to reduce the working week of 800,000 civilian employees, scale back flight hours of warplanes and postpone some equipment maintenance.
The deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf has also been cancelled.
The US Navy will gradually stand down several hundred planes starting in April, the Air Force will curtail flying hours and the Army will cut back training for all units except those deploying to Afghanistan.
"This will have a major impact on training and readiness," Hagel said. "Later this month, we intend to issue preliminary notifications to thousands of civilian employees who will be furloughed."
Hagel acknowledged that the budget cuts "will cause pain, particularly among our civilian workforce and their families."
"I'm also concerned, as we all are, about the impact on readiness that these cuts will have across our force," he added.
The Pentagon chief expressed "confidence" that the White House and President Barack Obama's Republican foes in Congress would eventually reach agreement.
But other officials laid bare the consequences.
"If you stop training for a while and you're a combat pilot, then you lose your rating and eventually can't fly at all, because we can't allow you to fly if you can't fly safely," said Ash Carter, Hagel's deputy at the Pentagon.
"You can't, you obviously can't fly proficiently, but you can't even fly safely. Then you have to go back to the long building-back process of getting your readiness back."
Obama was bound by law to initiate the automatic, indiscriminate cuts.
The hit to military and domestic spending, known as the sequester, was never supposed to happen, but was rather a device seen as so punishing that rival lawmakers would be forced to find a better compromise to cut the deficit.
But despite a looming reality that the nation would suffer, Democrats and Republicans remained far from compromise and were never close to agreement.
"We will get through this," President Obama says of the forced spending cuts
Obama, congressional leaders fail to bridge gaps on cuts, letting them take effect
Speaker Boehner says the House will take up a government funding measure
Washington (CNN) -- Politics trumped progress on Friday as President Barack Obama and Republican leaders traded blame for $85 billion in forced spending cuts after they failed to come up with a compromise to avert the harshest impacts.
The president signed an order required by law that set in motion the automatic, government-wide cuts.
Obama and congressional leaders from both parties met for about 45 minutes at the White House, but no agreement emerged to avert the cuts that both sides oppose.
After weeks of campaign-style events intended to inspire public outrage over the cuts, Obama sought to temper his description of their impact while making clear he thinks Republican intransigence prevented a deal to avoid the economic harm they'll cause.
"We will get through this," he told reporters. "This is not going to be an apocalypse as some people have said. It's just dumb and it's going to hurt."
Full text of Obama order
Still, a White House budget office report sent to Congress and released with Obama's order said the cuts would be "deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments, and core government functions."
The action was described in the report as "a blunt and indiscriminate instrument" that was "never intended to be implemented and does not represent a responsible way" for the country to realize deficit reduction.
OMB report to Congress
In a sign of the potential impact, the Department of Justice sent furlough notices to employees that warned they may be forced to take days off without pay in coming months.
Similar furloughs, as well as reduced services, were expected at other agencies if the cuts don't get replaced or eliminated. Military leaders have warned of impaired readiness of U.S. forces.
Shame and blame: Why Washington needs couples therapy
However, the full impact of the cuts weren't expected until April at the earliest.
The cuts amount to roughly 9% for a broad range of non-defense programs and 13% for the Pentagon over the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30.
They were included in a 2011 deal to raise the federal borrowing limit as an unacceptable outcome if Congress failed to agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan.
Obama's press conference on spending cuts
However, election-year politics stymied progress on such a deal, leading to the situation Friday in which both sides acknowledged being unable to prevent something neither wanted.
"There are smarter ways to cut spending," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, after the meeting with Obama.
Boehner repeated his past assertion that the GOP-led House has offered proposals to replace the forced spending cuts while the Democratic-led Senate has not, as well as his party's opposition to any increased tax revenue to offset the forced spending cuts.
Others who also took part in the White House gathering were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
In the White House briefing room, Obama told reporters that Republicans in Congress "allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful (tax) loophole to help reduce the deficit."
"As recently as yesterday, they decided to protect special interest tax breaks for the well off and the well connected and they think that that's apparently more important than protecting our military or middle class families from the pain of these cuts," Obama said.
He was referring to a procedural vote on Thursday in which Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal that called for eliminating some tax loopholes as part of a package with spending cuts.
Boehner and Republicans say the president and Democrats have yet to propose a serious plan to reduce spending, including costly entitlement programs, on a scale necessary to bring chronic federal deficits and debt under control.
Both Obama and Boehner foreshadowed the next major spending showdown - a March 27 deadline for Congress to authorize funding to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year.
4 myths about the spending cuts
Boehner told reporters that the House will take up a measure next week to authorize federal funding beyond that deadline.
"The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the" forced spending cuts, said a statement by Boehner's office.
Although the funding measure is unconnected to the spending cuts, Obama indicated he was open to a broader agreement that would resolve both issues.
"I do know that there are Republicans in Congress who privately, at least, say that they would rather close tax loopholes then let these cuts go through," said Obama in response to questions from reporters.
"... In the coming days and the coming weeks, I'm going to keeping on reaching out to them -- both individually and as groups of senators or members of the House -- and say to them, 'Let's fix this, not just for a month or two, but for years to come,' because the greatest nation on Earth does not conduct its business in month-to-month increments or by careening from crisis to crisis," Obama said.
Spending cuts: When they'll really bite
CNN's Dana Bash, Deirdre Walsh, Ted Barrett and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
SEFFNER, Fla. A man was missing and feared dead early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa.
Jeff Bush is presumed dead after a sinkhole opened under his bed.
/ CBS
His brother says Jeff Bush screamed for help before he disappeared.
The 36-year-old man's brother, Jeremy Bush, told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.
"When he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."
Jeremy Bush called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother Jeff. He said he jumped into the hole and dirt was quickly up to his neck.
"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy said. "But I just couldn't do nothing."
An arriving deputy pulled Jeremy Bush from the still-collapsing house.
28 Photos
Sinkholes
"I reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and pull him out of the hole," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Duvall said. "The hole was collapsing. At that time, we left the house."
Engineers worked to determine the size of the sinkhole. At the surface, officials estimated it was about 30 feet across. Below the surface, officials believed it was 100 feet wide.
"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.
Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told a news briefing that extra-sensitive listening devices and cameras were inserted into the sinkhole. "They did not detect any signs of life," he said.
By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.
Neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated.
Sinkholes are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.
Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP.
From the outside of the small, sky blue house, nothing appeared wrong. There wear no cracks and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution tape circling the house.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon said authorities asked sinkhole and engineering experts, and they were using equipment to see if the ground can support the weight of heavy machinery needed for the recovery effort.
Jeremy Bush stood in a neighbor's yard across the street from the house Friday and recounted the harrowing collapse.
"He was screaming my name. I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him," he said of his brother Jeff.
Jeremy Bush's wife and his 2-year-old daughter were also inside the house. "She keeps asking where her Uncle Jeff is," he said. "I lost everything. I work so hard to support my wife and kid and I lost everything."
Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened.
"It sounded like a car hit my house," she said.
The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind, sleeping in her car.
President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.
President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.
He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.
But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.
"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."
READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester
Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.
Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video
Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video
Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.
The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.
"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."
The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.
The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.
"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."
Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester
Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.
Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."
But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.
"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."
Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?
The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.
What were you doing last September? The charged particles that dance around Earth were busy. Unbeknown to most earthlings, a previously unseen ring of radiation encircled our planet for nearly the whole month – before being destroyed by a powerful interplanetary shock wave.
We already knew that two, persistent belts of charged particles, called the Van Allen radiation belts, encircle Earth. The discovery of a third, middle ring by NASA's twin Van Allen probes, launched in August 2012, suggests that these belts, which have puzzled scientists for over 50 years, are even stranger than we thought. Working out what caused the third ring to develop could help protect spacecraft from damaging doses of radiation.
Charged particles get trapped by Earth's magnetic field into two distinct regions, forming the belts. The inner belt, which extends from an altitude of 1600 to 12,900 kilometres, is fairly stable. But the outer belt, spanning altitudes ranging from 19,000 to 40,000 kilometres, can vary wildly. Over the course of minutes or hours, its electrons can be accelerated to close to the speed of light, and it can grow to 100 times its usual size.
Mystery acceleration
No one is sure what causes these "acceleration events", although it seems to have something to do with solar activity interacting with the Earths' magnetic field.
"That's one of the key things the probes are in place to understand," says Dan Baker of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "How does this cosmic accelerator, operating just a few thousand miles above our head, accelerate electrons to such extraordinarily high energies?"
When the Van Allen probes started taking data on 1 September 2012, one of these mysterious events was already under way. "We came in the middle of the movie there," Baker says. But otherwise, he says, "What we expected was what we saw when we first turned on: two distinct belts, separated."
That changed a day later when, to the team's surprise, an extra ring developed between the inner and outer ones. "We watched it develop right before our eyes," Baker says. The new, middle ring was relatively narrow, and its electrons had energies between 4 and 7.5 megaelectronvolts - about the same as in the outer Van Allen belt during an acceleration event.
Although the outer ring displayed its characteristic inconstancy, the new middle ring barely budged for nearly four weeks. Then a shock wave, probably linked to a burst of solar activity, wiped it out in less than an hour on 1 October.
Spacecraft malfunctions
It's not clear where the middle ring came from, Baker says, although it was probably related to the acceleration event. The electrons could have been stripped from the outer Van Allen belt, funnelled back towards the Earth and got trapped in the middle on the way, or they could have been energised from closer to Earth and shot up to higher altitudes.
Figuring out what happened could be important to protecting spacecraft from radiation damage, says Yuri Shprits of the University of California in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the observations but is crafting a theoretical explanation that he hopes to publish soon. "It truly presents us with a very important question, and very important puzzles," he says.
There were no specific spacecraft malfunctions during September that can be directly linked to the new belt, says Shprits. However satellite operators will want to know if such belts are common and if they pose more of a risk.
With no other examples of a transient belt caught so far, it's too soon to answer all those questions, Baker says. "We only have one in captivity," he says. "We're still trying to figure out exactly how it works."
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SINGAPORE: The overarching theme of the Subordinate Courts Workplan seminar this year is to make it easier for the public to get legal help and information.
In his first workplan keynote address, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon outlined a slew of initiatives to resolve informational inadequacy and litigation costs.
These include the Primary Justice Project to have a team of lawyers who will provide basic legal services to the public, coming up with guide books on motor vehicle accident scenarios, and simplifying the process for minor civil cases.
The initiatives point towards one thing - settling disputes out of court so as to save time and costs.
With less than 12 hours before sequestration becomes an official federal mandate, the prospects of lawmakers reaching a deal to avert sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts are virtually nonexistent. But as the so-called "sequestration" takes on a feel of increasing inevitability in Washington, politicians on both sides of the aisle are scrambling to assign blame for what many believe could lead to dire economic consequences.
In a series of press briefings and floor speeches today, lawmakers took to the microphone to blast their political counterparts for proposed theft, moral bankruptcy, and professional incompetence.
Play Video
Defense-related small businesses feel sequester pinch
"How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government?" asked House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in a press briefing this morning. "I'm for no more."
Boehner, towing the Republican line, assigned blame to the president for having allegedly "insisted" on the sequestration, and to Democrats for derailing Republican alternatives to avert it.
"It is the president's sequester," Boehner said. "The House has acted twice over the last 10 months to replace these cuts with smarter cuts. We've done our job... I'm happy to talk to the president, I'm happy to work with the president, but the House has done its job."
While the idea for sequestration did originate in the White House, both Republicans and Democrats supported the idea, with 174 House Republicans - including Boehner - voting in its favor. The House did pass two bills to avert the cuts, as Boehner said, but neither of them would have had any support from Democrats in the Senate, and White House would likely have vetoed them. Moreover, both are currently invalid because they were passed in the last congressional session.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, blasted Republicans for allegedly doing worse than just "kick the can down the road" on the issue.
"They're nudging the potato across the table with their noses," she accused. "We come to Washington to be legislators, representatives of our district and to be legislators. And somehow that piece is missing from what the Republicans are doing - they're just making noise... Either they don't want to legislate or they don't know how to legislate."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who earlier today was rebuffed in an offer to bring to the Senate floor both Republican and Democratic bills on averting sequester if the votes were held at majority thresholds, went after Republican motives for rejecting his idea.
"Are Republicans really filibustering a vote on replacing the sequester?" he asked on the Senate floor. Later, in a press briefing, he added: "The Republicans want the sequester to go forward!"
Reid will hold a vote for the Democratic proposal this afternoon, but that bill is not expected to garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, and is expected to go nowhere.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., argued that Reid and fellow Democrats want their bill to fail - "so they can go around the country blaming Republicans for a sequester the president himself proposed.
"They're so concerned about preventing anything from actually passing the Congress that they've limited the ability of senators on both sides to debate this issue openly and to offer different ideas," he contended.
In reality, both sides are refusing to compromise. President Obama is expected to sign a directive making sequestration official tomorrow, at which point he will meet with congressional leaders from both parties to discuss the way forward. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will also release a report detailing the specifics of sequestration tomorrow.
If a deal can be worked out before April, when some of the impacts of sequestration will begin to feel real, much of the potential damage will be averted. But there's a lot of ground to make up in the next 30 days: As of now, the two parties don't have a lot to say in agreement on the subject. Just this afternoon, the White House endorsed the Democratic Senate plan while threatening to veto a GOP proposal.
In the meantime, the blame game continues.
"House Republicans deserve to be called to task for leaving the American people in the lurch," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to reporters today.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.
During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.
"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.
"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.
"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"
Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."
Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.
Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.
Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.
Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.
"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.
"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.
Jodi Arias Under Attack in Third Day of Cross-Examination Watch Video
Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video
Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video
"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial
"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."
Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.
Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.
According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.
It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.
At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.
After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"
"I don't remember," Arias moaned.
"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"
"I don't remember, I don't know."
Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"
"Yes."
"So then take a look at it," he barked.
Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."
Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.
Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.
DIVIDING a falling cloud of frozen atoms sounds like an exotic weather experiment. In fact, it's the latest way to probe whether tiny objects obey Einstein's theory of general relativity, our leading explanation for gravity.
General relativity is based on the equivalence principle, which says that in free fall, all objects fall at the same rate, whatever their mass, provided the only force at work is gravity. That has been proven for large objects: legend has it that Galileo did it first by dropping various balls from the Tower of Pisa. Whether equivalence holds at quantum scales, where gravity's effects are not well understood, isn't clear. Figuring it out could help create a quantum theory of gravity, one of the biggest goals of modern physics.
Creating a quantum equivalent of Galileo's test isn't easy. In 2010 a team led by Ernst Rasel of the University of Hannover in Germany monitored a quantum object in free fall, by tossing a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) – a cloud of chilled atoms that behaves as a single quantum object and so is both particle and wave – down a 110-metre tall tower. Now they have split and recombined the wave – all before the BEC, made of rubidium atoms, reached the bottom. This produces an interference pattern that records the path of the falling atoms and can be used to calculate their acceleration (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/km6). The next step is to do the same experiment on a different kind of atom, with a different mass, to see if the equivalence principle holds.
The BEC can only be split for 100 milliseconds in the tower before hitting the bottom, so to allow tiny differences between the atom types to emerge, the work must be repeated in space, where the waves can be split for longer. By showing that a matter-wave can be split and recombined while falling, Rasel's result is a "major step" towards the space version, says Charles Wang of the University of Aberdeen, UK.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Quantum skyfall tests Einstein's gravity"
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HONG KONG: Asian markets rose Thursday after the Dow on Wall Street hit a more than five-year high, while the head of the European Central Bank soothed concerns over the eurozone.
A strong bond sale in Italy also helped the euro despite uncertainty after weekend polls, while the yen resumed its downward trend after Japan's government nominated a fan of aggressive easing as the new central bank governor.
Tokyo climbed 2.04 per cent as the yen sank on confirmation that Japan's government had put forward Haruhiko Kuroda to take over at the Bank of Japan.
Kuroda, the current Asian Development Bank chief, is known as an advocate of a looser monetary policy to overcome slow growth, in line with the views of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The dollar bought 92.44 yen, compared with 92.16 yen in New York late Wednesday.
Hong Kong shares advanced 1.10 per cent, Sydney added 0.71 per cent, Seoul rose 1.02 per cent and Shanghai was up 0.39 per cent.
ECB President Mario Draghi said Wednesday the bank would preserve the integrity of the eurozone, reasserting its commitment to buy up bonds of under-pressure countries.
"We are committed to preserving the integrity of our currency, in the interests of all people of the euro area," he said.
The announcement, which came after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said its own huge easing would stay in place, came as welcome relief to markets after Italy's poll deadlock raised fears of a return to Europe's debt crisis.
On forex markets the euro rebounded after being hammered in the wake of Sunday's inconclusive poll, which saw voters shun austerity policies and leave the country with a hung parliament.
The euro sat at $1.3150 and 121.56 yen in Tokyo, from $1.3136 and 121.07 yen -- and well up from the levels just above $1.30 and 119 yen seen earlier in the week.
The single currency was also given support from news that Rome had successfully sold 6.5 billion euros of treasury bonds, albeit at a higher price, providing evidence for now that it can borrow cash to pay its own bills.
On Wall Street the Dow ended at its highest level since October 2007 after reports showed US pending home sales rebounded sharply in January to the highest level in almost three years.
In other positive news, durable goods orders in January -- excluding volatile aircraft -- surged 1.9 per cent, with gains particularly strong in capital goods, suggesting business confidence in the economy in upcoming months.
The Dow jumped 1.26 per cent, while the S&P 500 rose 1.27 per cent and the Nasdaq added 1.04 per cent.
Oil prices rose, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, gaining 34 cents to $93.10 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for April delivery adding 35 cents to $112.22.
Gold was at $1,597.70 at 0220 GMT compared with $1,608.32 late Wednesday.
(CBS News) -- The federal budget cuts expected to take effect this Friday are not simple. For example, hundreds of illegal immigrants are being released from detention because the administration says it can't afford to keep them.
Until recently, Fredi Alcazar was one of those detained. An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Alcazar spent a month in jail after a traffic stop near Atlanta last December. He now wears an electronic monitoring band on his ankle. The device lets immigration officials know where he is at all times.
(watch: Releasing illegal immigrants over budget cuts, below)
Alcazar was released unexpectedly in January.
"I was surprised they released me," Alcazar recalled. "They didn't say anything."
Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would not tell CBS exactly how many detainees they released ahead of for Friday's automatic budget cuts. They also declined to say where or when the releases occurred.
Those let go, like Fredi Alcazar, are required to wear electronic tracking devices, regularly call immigration officials or visit ICE offices.
"We started getting calls all of a sudden they had been released," said immigration advocate Dulce Guerrero. "We were very much in shock."
The early release of detainees was a surprise to Guerrero.
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"These folks are no criminals," she said. "These folks in there are moms, dads, students, community members who are in there for no license, for a broken tail light."
But some members of Congress are demanding ICE provide information on each detainee's case.
"When you release these people and expect them to show up at a court proceeding at a later date, we found before that 90 percent of them don't show up," said Congressman Michael McCaul, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Besides Georgia, CBS did learn that many releases were in Arizona, California and Florida. Immigration advocates said that "supervised release" costs about $14 a day compared to about $160 a day to keep detainees in jail.
He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.
And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.
"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."
"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.
"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.
Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.
Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.
Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.
Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video
Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video
Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video
Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.
"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.
"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.
Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"
"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"
During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.
"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."
Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.
Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.
"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."
A Martian sunset, as seen by NASA's Spirit rover in 2005. (Image: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA)
There's a new comet in town, and it is making a beeline for Mars. If projections of its orbit are correct, the icy visitor will buzz the Red Planet in October 2014.
Dubbed C/2013 A1, the comet was discovered on 3 January by prolific comet hunter Robert McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Colleagues at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona found images of the comet in their catalogue that date back to 8 December 2012, giving additional information about its movements.
These observations allowed astronomers to trace the comet's likely path around the sun. The calculated trajectory has C/2013 A1 crossing Mars' orbit on 19 October 2014, according to Australian blogger Ian Musgrave.
That doesn't necessarily mean a collision will occur. The best estimates right now have the comet passing a safe distance of 900,000 kilometres from the Martian surface. Asteroid 2012 DA14 got much closer to Earth last week, skimming by at a distance of 34,400 kilometres. But with so little data in hand, the calculations are not precise. It's possible the comet will miss Mars by as much as 36 million kilometres - or it could smack right into the planet. "An impact can't be ruled out at this stage," Musgrave wrote.
From Earth, we should be able to see the comet and Mars sitting side by side through small telescopes. And from Mars, the comet could be as spectacular as the expected "supercomet" ISON, which will come into view this year and could outshine the full moon.
Assuming the comet's orbit brings it close enough - but not too close - to Mars, the object should be visible either by rovers on the surface or the armada of Mars-orbiting satellites, which have a history of snapping spectacular shots of the Red Planet and its neighborhood.
HONG KONG: Asian markets mostly rose on Wednesday after US Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke reaffirmed the central bank's huge monetary easing scheme, but a stronger yen sent Tokyo lower.
Investors remained hesitant and the euro came under pressure after Italy's election results which left no party in overall control, raising concerns that uncertainty in Rome could see the eurozone return to the dark days of crisis.
Tokyo fell 0.78 per cent by noon but Hong Kong rose 0.44 per cent, Sydney added 0.64 per cent, Shanghai climbed 1.14 per cent and Seoul was 0.18 per cent higher.
In testimony to Congress Bernanke said the Fed's $85 billion a month bond-purchase programme aimed at holding down long-term interest rates and encouraging investment -- known as quantitative easing -- was still merited.
While warning that looming steep budget cuts could slow growth, he stressed high unemployment was a main challenge to the economy, adding that the risks of the programme -- inflation, and risky behaviour in the financial industry -- were being monitored closely.
Bernanke said the programme was "providing important support to the recovery".
His comments on Tuesday were a relief for financial markets, which stumbled last week after minutes from the Fed's latest policy meeting suggested some members wanted to curtail the policy before the economy was back in track.
"Bernanke confirmed the Fed's commitment to continue quantitative easing until unemployment falls, and US economic data are clearly improving," Martin Lakos, division director in Macquarie's Private Wealth division in Australia, told Dow Jones Newswires.
On Wall Street the Dow rose 0.84 per cent, the S&P 500 added 0.61 per cent and the Nasdaq jumped 0.43 per cent.
US investors also took comfort in surprisingly robust new home sales while the Conference Board's February consumer confidence index showed a surprise jump to 69.6 from 58.4 in January, well above the average analyst estimate of 62.0.
But the dollar fell against the yen in Asia as dealers sought the safe havens after the inconclusive Italian elections.
The dollar bought 91.70 yen in Tokyo Wednesday, from 91.93 yen in New York late Tuesday and well off the 94.77 yen high seen on Monday.
The euro slipped to $1.3043 and 119.60 yen from $1.3061 and 120.08 yen.
Eurozone fears have been reignited after the Italian polls, which left the country with a hung parliament and a protest party effectively holding the balance of power.
Investors fear the outcome will mean Italy will reverse the austerity policies put in place to pay off its debts, with implications for the wider region.
Italian leftist leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who said he had "come first but not won", warned that the huge anti-austerity protest vote should be heeded beyond Italy's borders, adding: "The bell tolls also for Europe."
Oil prices were mixed, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, shedding two cents to $92.61 while Brent North Sea crude for April delivery gained three cents to $112.74.
Gold was at $1,612.40 at 0220 GMT compared with $1,597.80 late Tuesday.
NEW: Conflicting reports emerge over company's safety record
A British passenger and the pilot are hospitalized
The balloon carried tourists from the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, France and Hungary
A gas explosion caused the balloon to fall about 300 meters (almost 1,000 feet)
Were you there? Have you taken such a trip before in Egypt? Send us your experiences.
(CNN) -- The view from above southern Egypt is stunning, a contrast of beige desert valley giving way to green farmland,including fields of sugar cane. Tourists soak in the sight by hiring hot air balloons that have large baskets to carry passengers hundreds of feet above the countryside.
Tuesday morning, as one of the balloons prepared to land, an explosion pierced the air, followed by a spreading billow of smoke.
"My first thought was that it was sugar cane that was burning," said Christopher Michel, a photographer who was a passenger in another balloon at the time.
Smoke from the burning sugar canepainted the ancient city of Luxor below with an eerie haziness.
But the concern shown by the balloon pilot and the blaring sirens from emergency vehicles told Michel that something was wrong. He could not imagine the extent: One of the balloons had exploded, and its 21 passengers and operators plummeted about 1,000 feet (300 meters) to the ground.
By Tuesday afternoon, the number of dead had climbed to 19, making it the world's deadliest hot air balloon accident in at least 20 years.
"This juxtaposition of this great beauty and this wonderful country and this horrible tragedy is just really shocking," Michel told CNN. "We all feel terrible."
It was an early, dark morning, Michel said, and uneventful for 45 minutes until they started to descend. He was overlooking mud-brick buildings and fields, with the Valley of the Kings in the distance, when the explosion shattered the quiet of the morning.
It was a gas explosion, state-run EgyNews reported.
Fatal hot air balloon crash
HIDE CAPTION
Passengers in the balloon included 19 foreign tourists: nine from Hong Kong, four from Japan, three from Britain, two from France and one from Hungary, officials said.
An Egyptian pilot and another Egyptian also were on board, Luxor province spokesman Badawi al-Masri said.
Two people -- a Briton and the pilot -- are hospitalized.
Balloon rides offering panoramic aerial views of the Nile River and the ancient temples of Karnak and Hatshepsut are a popular tourist attraction in Luxor, about a nine-hour drive southeast of Cairo.
"You can see Valley of the Kings in the background bordered by farmland," Pauline Liang of Vancouver, Canada, told CNN's iReport last year. "Below were banana farms, and behind us was the city of Luxor. There was a great contrast between desert landscape, lush farmland and urban development."
Tuesday's crash prompted Gov. Izzat Saad of Luxor province to ban all hot air balloon flights until further notice.
Conflicting reports emerged about the company that operated the doomed balloon, Sky Cruise.
The head of the country's civil aviation authority said the company was licensed and working legally, EgyNews reported.
The agency has begun an investigation of the incident, Mohammed Ibrahim Sharif said.
According to Sharif, a fire broke out in the balloon while the workers were trying to land it, just feet from the ground. The balloon then shot upwards again, he said.
The balloon's basket was divided into four parts, he said, each holding five passengers.
Meanwhile, Luxor's chamber of tourism said the company had previous violations, EgyNews reported.
Several balloon companies had terminated contracts with the local meteorological service after the Egyptian revolution, Tharwat Agami, chairman of the chamber of tourism, said.
Sky Cruise and other companies were known to violate safety and security instructions by flying out of East Luxor, instead of the recommended West Luxor, he said.
Comparing it to a previous hot air balloon experience in another country, Michel noted that there was no safety briefing before the Luxor balloons lifted off the ground, but added that he felt safe during the trip.
From what he could tell, the doomed balloon was not overloaded, he said on his Twitter account.
Luxor is among Egypt's top tourist draws. Visitors go to see ancient temples and tombs, and travel sites often recommend the hot air balloon trips.
The last hot air balloon accident in Luxor occurred in 2009, when 16 foreign tourists were injured after a balloon struck a cell phone transmission tower.
Until Tuesday's incident, the deadliest accident in recent memory took place in 1989, when 13 people were killed as two hot air balloons collided in Australia.
Egyptian government spokesman Alaa Hadidi announced that the Cabinet will form a committee from the Ministry of Civil Aviation to investigate Tuesday's accident, EgyNews said.
CNN's Housam Ahmed and Hamdi Alkhshali, along with journalist Adam Makary in Cairo, contributed to this report.
(CBS News) -- On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both sides agree the south have changed in the past half-century. At issue is, has it changed enough?
In Shelby County, Alabama, the question is whether the state's racist past must forever define it.
(Watch: Voting Rights Act challengers take aim at "Section 5", below)
Fifty years ago, Alabama was the cradle of the civil rights movement, where protestors endured fire hoses, arrests and bombings in the fight for equality. One result was the Voting Rights Act.
One provision of the Act, Section 5, still requires all or part of 16 states, mostly in the south, to get approval from the Justice Department before changing voting procedures or electoral maps.
"Section five, which is what we are attacking, was never intended by congress to be permanent," said Frank Ellis, a Shelby County lawyer who is at the center of the battle to eliminate Section 5, and force the federal government to treat Alabama and other covered states like the rest of the country.
"They are still using the same criteria to determine whether these 16 states that are covered, they are still using the same test that they used in 1965," Ellis said.
"Things have changed in the South," he said. "This is a dynamic society."
But Ernest Montgomery says things have not changed enough. He was on the city council in Calera, Alabama when city officials, facing a population boom, redrew his district map. He lost the election to a white candidate. Under Section 5, the Justice Department ordered a new election and Montgomery won.
The minority representation in his district under the old map was about 67% African American, according to Montgomery. With the new map, that number dropped to about 28%.
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Shelby County Pastor Harry Jones calls it discrimination.
"I think it was designed to dilute the power of the minority community," Jones said. "It did just that."
Opponents like Ellis say they are not attacking the entire Voting Rights Act. If there's intentional discrimination, people can sue, just like they do in Michigan, Ohio and other states that aren't by Section Five.
We used to call it shoplifting, but these days the foot soldiers of retail crime rings are known as boosters. Police even have an acronym for these operations: ORC, which stands for Organized Retail Crime.
"It's just like a Fortune 500 company," said Sergeant Eric Lee of the Gardena Police Department in Gardena, Calif. "All of this is just organized."
Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET
Police say big retail stores, from Walgreens to J.C. Penny, are getting hit by highly sophisticated shoplifting networks that steal and resell everything from underwear to razors to milk. According to the National Retail Federation, theft can amount to annual losses as high as a $37 billion for retail businesses.
"Every store in every city has to go through this," Lee said. "They wait until no one's paying attention and they walk out."
Tide detergent is currently a hot target because it is compact, expensive and easy to sell on the streets for profit, police said. The Street name: "liquid gold."
"Sometimes we get rings that just do alcohol," Lee said. "And then we get some that do just meat and seafood."
Investigators say boosters move the loot for cents on the dollar to fencing operations -- the black market resellers of the stolen goods -- which sell the stolen merchandise in plain sight in stores. Boosters, fencers, Mr. Bigs, all of those involved in these shoplifting operations can potentially make millions a year from boosting and re-selling stolen goods.
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And Mike Swett is on the case. A former Riverside County sheriff's deputy in Los Angeles, Swett was badly injured in a car wreck and now works as a full-time private investigator on the ORC beat who has worked with Target, Marshalls, T.J. Maxx. Stores hire him to do his own undercover police work, catching thieves before involving local law enforcement.
"Kind of like working a narcotics case, it's like you've got low-level, mid-level and then top dog," Swett said. "We like to go after the top dog and the only way to get to the top dog is mid-level first."
At his command center -- his apartment -- Swett showed off the boxes upon boxes of tapes and photographs he has collected, the fruits of countless silent stake-out hours.
Swett said he has been casing two joints in L.A. for months, both alleged to be mid-level fencing operations. "Nightline" was invited to ride along with him when he sent undercover agents in for a final reconnaissance mission.
At some stores and shopping malls, clerks do little to stop shoplifters and often let them run, which has contributed to the growing fencing operations.
"[The stores] don't want their employees to get injured," Swett said. "So oftentimes they will call the police, but by the time we get there they are already in their car and they are gone."
This leaves professional investigators like Swett to put the pieces together and bust open the gangs to lead over-stretched police departments to the prey.
When raid day arrived, a motorcade of squad cars departed from the Gardena, Calif., police department and pulled up to one fencing operation. Swett said the merchandise being sold was boosted goods.
"There is Victoria's Secret, expensive Victoria's Secret, the gift sets," he said, pointing down a line of tables. "J.C. Penny, Miramax, its real stuff not counterfeit."
He spotted a bottle of Katy Perry brand perfume, which usually retails for around $90 but one seller had it priced at $59.
iPhone, iPad and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
, by tossing a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) – a cloud of chilled atoms that behaves as a single quantum object and so is both particle and wave – down a 110-metre tall tower. Now they have split and recombined the wave – all before the BEC, made of rubidium atoms, reached the bottom. This produces an interference pattern that records the path of the falling atoms and can be used to calculate their acceleration (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/km6). The next step is to do the same experiment on a different kind of atom, with a different mass, to see if the equivalence principle holds.
