Malaysia threatens 'drastic' steps in Borneo siege

LAHAD DATU, Malaysia: Malaysia threatened Saturday to take "drastic action" against intruding followers of a self-proclaimed Filipino sultan after a tense standoff erupted into a shootout that killed 14 people.

Twelve followers of the little-known sultan of Sulu and two Malaysian security personnel were killed in Friday's firefight, police said, as the more than two-week-old siege in a remote corner of Malaysia turned deadly.

Dozens of Filipinos have been holed up on Borneo island, surrounded by a massive Malaysian police and military cordon, since landing by boat from their nearby Philippine islands to insist the area belongs to their Islamic leader.

"We want them to surrender immediately. If they don't, they will face drastic action," Hamza Taib, police chief of the Malaysian state of Sabah where the drama was taking place, told AFP.

He declined to provide details of what security forces had in store but his comments echoed growing Malaysian impatience with the situation.

In Manila, Philippine President Benigno Aquino urged the gunmen to surrender immediately.

"To those who have influence and the capacity to reason with those in (the affected town of) Lahad Datu, I ask you to convey this message: surrender now, without conditions," he said in a statement.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose government has been embarrassed by the security breach, said in the shootout's aftermath that he told police and armed forces to take whatever action was necessary to end the impasse.

"Now there is no grace period for the group to leave," he was quoted as saying by Malaysian media, blaming the intruders for sparking the violence.

But the deadly clash drew criticism from opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

"Why is our government lax about national security,?" he said in a statement late Friday, adding that the government must explain what transpired in the bloody clash claiming two Malaysian lives.

Muslim-majority Malaysia had previously avoided tough talk, expressing hope the intruders would leave peacefully.

But even if they give up, they will face Malaysian prosecution, Hamza said, after he met with Malaysia's home minister and other top security officials.

Local residents were staying indoors and the usually bustling coastal town of Lahad Datu was quiet with most shops closed on Saturday.

Georgina Paulino, a 50-year-old street vendor, complained that her business has been badly hit.

"People are afraid they could be shot if they come out," she told AFP.

The Filipinos, who are estimated to number between 100 and 300, sailed from their remote islands to press Jamalul Kiram III's claim to Sabah.

Kiram, 74, claims to be the heir to the Islamic sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of the southern Philippines and a portion of Borneo.

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.

- AFP/ck

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Crave Ep. 111: Man vs. jetpack

Man vs. jetpack, Ep: 111

Subscribe to Crave:

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A German inventor has built a DIY jetpack, so we hop onboard. Also, we get a first look at "Star Wars" pinball for iOS and
Android, and "Star Trek" fans win a major space battle when they vote to name a Pluto moon "Vulcan." All that and more on this week's episode of Crave.

Crave stories:

- Google Nexus fired into space to see if screams are audible

- Myo gesture-control armband uses muscle power

- Star Wars Pinball coming tomorrow to Android, iOS (video)

- Get a ball's-eye view with camera in football

- Trekkies conquer contest to name Pluto moons

- Inventor gets off the ground with homemade jetpack

- First-person Mario video will blow your mind

- Crave giveaway: Two leather iPad cases from Kavaj

Social networking:

- Stephen on Twitter

- Stephen on Google+

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Fla. man presumed dead after sinkhole opens under his bed

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.

"I just want my nephew," she said through tears.

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Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

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.

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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.

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US sailors jailed for Okinawa rape: report

TOKYO: Two US sailors who raped a Japanese woman in Okinawa last October, sparking island-wide anger, were on Friday jailed for nine and 10 years, a report said.

The Naha District Court in Okinawa said Christopher Browning, 24, should go to prison for 10 years while Skyler Dozierwalker, 23, should serve nine, Jiji Press reported.

Browning and Dozierwalker, who were not stationed in Okinawa, had been drinking on the evening of the attack, which took place on the street and left the unidentified woman with neck injuries.

During an earlier court appearance the two men had admitted the offence, which caused outrage on the sub-tropical islands and beyond, and led to a nationwide night-time curfew on all US military personnel in Japan.

Despite the curfew, misconduct involving US servicemen, much of it drunken, has continued to fuel anti-US sentiment in communities with bases.

Wary of yet another public relations disaster, the US moved quickly to try to lower the temperature in the immediate aftermath of the rape, with ambassador John Roos holding a special news conference at which he appeared visibly angry and upset.

"The United States will cooperate in every way possible with the Japanese authorities to address this terrible situation."

"I understand the anger that many people feel with respect to this reported incident," he said. "I have a 25-year-old daughter myself, so this is very personal to me."

The attack came amid already high tensions in Okinawa, which saw demonstrations last year against the US deployment to the island of the tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft.

The aircraft's perceived poor safety record has been picked over in Japanese media and by local opponents, but commentators say it is a proxy issue and resentment over what many see as an unfair burden is at the root of objections.

Okinawa is the reluctant host to more than half of the 47,000 American service personnel in Japan, and the crimes, noise and risk of accidents associated with their bases regularly provoke ire in the local community.

In 1995 the gang rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by US servicemen sparked mass protests resulting in a US-Japan agreement to reduce the huge US military presence on the Okinawan chain.

Okinawans say other parts of Japan should take more of the burden and want bases closed or reduced in size.

- AFP/xq

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Google compression algorithm Zopfli may lead to faster Internet

Google has released a new data compression algorithm it hopes will make the Internet faster for everyone.

Dubbed Zopfli, the open-source algorithm will accelerate data transfer speeds and reduce Web page load times by compressing content up to 8 percent smaller than the zlib software library, Google said in a company blog post today. Named after a Swiss bread recipe, the new algorithm is an implementation of the Deflate algorithm, which is used in the ZIP archive format, as well as in gzip file compression.

"The higher data density is achieved by using more exhaustive compression techniques, which make the compression a lot slower, but do not affect the decompression speed," said Lode Vandevenne, a Zurich-based software engineer who implemented Zopfli as part of this 20 percent time activity.

Zopfli is a compression-only library, meaning that existing software can decompress the data. It is also bit-stream compatible with gzip, ZIP, PNG, and HTTP requests, among others.

"The smaller compressed size allows for better space utilization, faster data transmission, and lower web page load latencies," he said, adding that mobile users will benefit from the smaller compression in the form of lower data transfer rates and reduced battery use.

Because the amount of CPU time required for compression is two to three orders of magnitude more than zlib, Google believes Zopfli is best suited for applications where data is compressed once and but delivered many times over -- such as static content for the Web.

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Fierce wildfire outside L.A. approached homes

Wildfire approaches homes in Riverside County, Calif., outside Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 2013. / KCBS-TV/CBS

RIVERSIDE, Calif. Flames from a ferocious wildfire burned palm trees along residential streets and came very close to homes in Riverside County, but dying winds helped firefighters stop its progress.

County Fire spokeswoman Jody Hageman said residents from two streets were told to evacuate Thursday night at the peak of the fire that burned about 150 acres in and around Rancho Jurupa Regional Park, some 60 miles east of Los Angeles. It was 20 percent contained after about three hours. The mandatory evacuation was later changed to voluntary, reports CBS Los Angeles station KCBS-TV.

Embers from the flames landed on palm trees and people's homes , KCBS says.

Some 2,000 customers were without power at one point, but it was restored to everyone by about 11 p.m. local time, the station adds.

About 200 firefighters helped by helicopters took on the blaze, whose bright flames and huge plumes of smoke were visible from long distances.

There were no reports of any injuries or homes or buildings burning.

The National Weather Service issued an advisory for gusty offshore winds in Riverside County that will be in effect until Saturday.

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Sequestration: Surrender Is in the Air

The budget ax is about to fall, and there's little lawmakers in Washington are doing to stop it.

Despite a parade of dire warnings from the White House, an $85 billion package of deep automatic spending cuts appears poised to take effect at the stroke of midnight on Friday.

The cuts – known in Washington-speak as the sequester – will hit every federal budget, from defense to education, and even the president's own staff.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats and Republicans each staged votes Thursday aimed at substituting the indiscriminate across-the-board cuts with more sensible ones. Democrats also called for including new tax revenue in the mix. Both measures failed.

Lleaders on both sides publicly conceded that the effort was largely for show, with little chance the opposing chamber would embrace the other's plan. They will discuss their differences with President Obama at the White House on Friday.

"It isn't a plan at all, it's a gimmick," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said today of the Democrats' legislation.

"Republicans call the plan flexibility" in how the cuts are made, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Let's call it what it is. It is a punt."

The budget crisis is the product of a longstanding failure of Congress and the White House to compromise on plans for deficit reduction. The sequester itself, enacted in late 2011, was intended to be so unpalatable as to help force a deal.

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Republicans and Democrats, however, remain gridlocked over the issue of taxes.

Obama has mandated that any steps to offset the automatic cuts must include new tax revenue through the elimination of loopholes and deductions. House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP insist the approach should be spending cuts-only, modifying the package to make it more reasonable.

"Do we want to close loopholes? We sure do. But if we are going to do tax reform, it should focus on creating jobs, not funding more government," House Speaker John Boehner said, explaining his opposition to Obama's plan.

Boehner, McConnell, Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will huddle with Obama at the White House on Friday for the first face-to-face meeting of the group this year.

"There are no preconditions to a meeting like this," White House spokesman Jay Carney said today. "The immediate purpose of the meeting is to discuss the imminent sequester deadline and to avert it."

Even if the leaders reach a deal, there's almost no chance a compromise could be enacted before the deadline. Lawmakers are expected to recess later today for a long weekend in their districts.

What will be the short-term impact of the automatic cuts?

Officials say it will be a gradual, "rolling impact" with limited visible impact across the country in the first few weeks that the cuts are allowed to stand.

Over the long term, however, the Congressional Budget Office and independent economic analysts have warned sequester could lead to economic contraction and possibly a recession.

"This is going to be a big hit on the economy," Obama said Wednesday night.

"It means that you have fewer customers with money in their pockets ready to buy your goods and services. It means that the global economy will be weaker," he said. "And the worst part of it is, it's entirely unnecessary."

Both sides say that if the cuts take effect, the next best chance for a resolution could come next month when the parties need to enact a new federal budget. Government funding runs out on March 27, raising the specter of a federal shutdown if they still can't reach a deal.

"As we anticipate an across-the-board budget cuts across our land, we still expect to see your goodness prevail, O God, " Senate Chaplain Barry Black prayed on the Senate floor this morning, "and save us from ourselves."

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Resale prices of private homes rebound in January

SINGAPORE: Prices of resale private homes rebounded in January, rising 0.3 per cent, reversing the previous month's 0.2 per cent decline, according to the Singapore Residential Price Index flash estimates published by the Institute of Real Estate Studies at the National University of Singapore.

The increase in January was led by price growth in the small unit segment, defined as homes below 506 square feet.

In January, prices of small units rose 2.6 per cent, reversing a 0.7 per cent fall in December.

Prices of resale homes located in the central region also climbed by 0.7 per cent in January, following a 1.5 per cent decrease in the previous month.

Meanwhile, the only segment that registered a price drop last month was homes outside the central area.

Prices fell 0.1 per cent in January, compared with a 0.8 per cent increase in December.

- CNA/ck

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Viddy doubles length of clips, adds video enhancement tools

Viddy's new iOS app interface.

(Credit:
Viddy)

Social video startup video has released a new iOS app with a bevy of new features to help users enhance the videos they produce and stave off Twitter's upstart video-sharing app Vine.

Debuting this evening in Apple's App Store, the new app doubles the size of videos users can upload from 15 seconds to 30 seconds, as well as adding the Vine-like ability to pause recording to splice together segments into a single clip. The app also adds 15 new video filters, licensed music tracks from popular artists that can be added to videos, and stop-motion functionality that adjusts video frame rates.

Viddy, which is sometimes referred to as the Instagram of video, also social discovery tools to help users find and share videos that are important to them. The update adds a section with curated video categories and trending topics. A geo-centric feed spotlights videos from specific regions, while another feed focuses on user interests and preferences.

In another Twitter-like feature, Viddy will add a verified user program for celebrities, public figures, and company brands.

The new video comes in the wake of corporate upheaval at the Venice, Calif.-based startup. The company, which claims 40 million users, revealed earlier this week that it had laid off a dozen employees, or about a third of its work force. The cuts came less than a month after the firing of co-founder and CEO Brett O'Brien, who was rumored to have turned down a buyout offer from Twitter, which ended up buying Vine and launching its app last month.

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