– The New Delhi woman whose rape set off huge protests is now "fighting for her life" in a Singapore hospital, its chief executive says. "In addition to her prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen, as well as significant brain injury." She has already been through three surgeries in India, the Times of India notes. Meanwhile, another woman who reported a gang rape has committed suicide, the AP reports. Two officers have now been fired and one suspended in that case; insiders say that instead of responding to the case, police harassed the 18-year-old after she reported it on Nov. 27. The three suspects in the attack weren't arrested until last night. Another police officer has been suspended in a third rape case after he reportedly refused to register the allegations against a driver.

Expand this summary.

SINGAPORE: The 23-year-old Delhi gang-rape victim has significant brain injury , infection in lungs and abdomen and she is currently struggling against all odds at Mount Elizabeth Hospital where her condition continues to be "extremely critical", the hospital said on Thursday."Our medical team's investigations upon her arrival at the hospital yesterday showed that in addition to her prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen, as well as significant brain injury," said Dr Kelvin Loh, chief executive officer, Mount Elizabeth Hospital.In a statement, Dr Loh said, "The patient is currently struggling against the odds, and fighting for her life."Briefing reporters here on girl's condition, Loh said, "As at 28 December, 11am (8:30 IST) the patient continues to remain in an extremely critical condition."The girl, who was gang-raped and brutally assaulted in a moving bus on December 16, was brought here in an air ambulance yesterday and admitted to the intensive care unit.She had undergone three surgeries at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, where she remained on ventilator support during most part of the treatment. Doctors removed major part of her intestines which had become gangrenous."A multi-disciplinary team of specialists has been working tirelessly to treat her since her arrival, and is doing everything possible to stabilise her condition over the next few days," Dr Loh said."The High Commission of India has been fully supportive in helping the hospital and her family, and ensuring that the best care is made available," he added.The security was tightened at the hospital, favoured by well-heeled patients, with each visitor screened before being allowed into the ICU.In Delhi, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi stressed that no time should be lost in bringing the perpetrators of such barbarous act to justice.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured that those found guilty of lapses in the aftermath of the incident will not be spared."We are committed to bringing the guilty to justice as soon as possible," Singh said, adding that best possible medical care was being provided to the victim.The victim's father, who flew in with her, said he was reassured that the best is being done for his daughter.The girl's family members do not speak English and rely on interpreters to communicate with hospital staff, the Strait Times newspaper reported.The High Commission of India has assigned a liaison officer with the family. ||||| The victim of a gang-rape in New Delhi fought for her life at a Singapore hospital Friday as officials in the Indian state of Punjab fired and suspended police officers accused of ignoring the rape of another woman, who then committed suicide.

 Indian authorities have been accused of belittling rape victims and refusing to file cases against their attackers, further deterring victims _ already under societal pressure to keep the assaults quiet _ from reporting the crimes.

 However, the gang-rape of the 23-year-old student on a moving bus in the capital two weeks ago has brought new focus on police and community attitudes toward woman in India. Demonstrators in New Delhi have demanded stronger protections for women and stronger punishment for rapists.

 Authorities in Punjab took action Thursday when an 18-year-old woman killed herself by drinking poison a month after she told police she was gang-raped.

 State authorities suspended one police officer and fired two others on accusations they delayed investigating and taking action in the case. The three accused in the rape were only arrested Thursday night, a month after the crime was reported.

 "This is a very sensitive crime, I have taken it very seriously," said Paramjit Singh Gill, a top police officer in the city of Patiala.

 The Press Trust of India reported that the woman was raped Nov. 13 and reported the attack to police Nov. 27. But police harassed the girl, asked her embarrassing questions and took no action against the accused, PTI reported, citing police sources.

 Authorities in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh also suspended a police officer on accusations he refused to register a rape complaint from a woman who said she had been attacked by a driver.

 Meanwhile, doctors in Singapore said the New Delhi gang-rape victim remained in extremely critical condition, had suffered a heart attack, a lung and abdominal infection and `'significant" brain injury.

 `'The patient is currently struggling against the odds, and fighting for her life," said Mount Elizabeth Hospital chief executive Dr. Kelvin Loh.

 Police have arrested six people in connection with the attack, which left the victim with severe internal injuries.

 `'We wish she recovers and comes back to us and that no time is lost in bringing the perpetrators of such a barbaric act to justice," said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party.

 Other politicians have come under fire for comments insulting the protesters and diminishing the crime.

 On Friday, Abhijit Mukherjee, a national lawmaker and the son of India's president, apologized for calling the protesters `'highly dented and painted" women, who go from discos to demonstrations.

 `'I tender my unconditional apology to all the people whose sentiments got hurt," he told NDTV news.

 ___

 Follow Ravi Nessman at twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ravinessman |||||


The comet Hartley is seen in this undated image courtesy of NASA. Astronomers have found the first comet with ocean-like water in a major boost to the theory that the celestial bodies were a significant source of water for a thirsty early Earth.

 LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found the first comet with ocean-like water in a major boost to the theory that the celestial bodies were a significant source of water for a thirsty early Earth.

 The intense heat of the planet immediately after it formed means any initial water would have quickly evaporated and scientists believe the oceans emerged around 8 million years later.

 The puzzle is where the water, which is vital for life on Earth, came from.

 Past analysis of water-ice from far-flung comets suggested they could have delivered no more than 10 percent of today's oceans because the chemical "fingerprints" did not match up.

 But research from Paul Hartogh of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and colleagues published on Wednesday showed a comet called 103P/Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as the Earth's oceans.

 The finding substantially increases the amount of water that could have originated from comets, which are made up of rock and ice with a characteristic tail of gas and dust. Previous models of the early Earth implied most water came from asteroids.

 In the case of Hartley 2, researchers using infrared instruments on the Hershel Space Observatory found that ice on the comet has a near identical "D/H" ratio to seawater. D/H measures the proportion of deuterium -- or heavy hydrogen, which has an extra neutron -- compared to ordinary hydrogen in water.

 "It was a big surprise when we saw the ratio was almost the same as what we find in the Earth's oceans," Hartogh told Reuters.

 "It means it is not true any more that a maximum of 10 percent of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets."

 Hartogh, whose research was published online in Nature, believes Hartley 2, whose current orbit around the sun does not extend much beyond Jupiter, started life in a different part of the solar system than other comets studied.

 It probably formed in the Kuiper belt, which lies about 30 to 50 times further from the sun than the Earth, while the others come from the Oort Cloud, some 5,000 times further away.

 (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Janet Lawrence) ||||| Image caption Comet Hartley 2 was also the subject of the Deep Impact probe study

 Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than all the comets we know about, researchers say.

 A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the fraction of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water.

 Like our oceans, it had half the amount of deuterium seen from other comets.

 The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of the Earth's water could have initially come from cometary impacts.

 Just a few million years after its formation, the early Earth was rocky and dry; most likely, something brought the water that covers most of the planet today.

 Water has something of a molecular fingerprint in the amount of deuterium it contains, and only about half a dozen comets have been measured in this way - and all of them have exhibited a deuterium fraction twice as high as the oceans.

 Asteroids, by contrast, give rise to the meteors and meteorites that arrive on Earth, making their deuterium fraction more well-established.

 Meteoritic material has roughly the same proportion of deuterium that the Earth's oceans contain, and so the assumption has been that if water arrived from elsewhere, it came from asteroids.

 Clouded measure

 Until now, all of the comets that have been measured have been so-called Oort Cloud objects, believed to have been formed early in the Solar System's history in the region of the giant planets Neptune and Uranus and kicked out to a great distance as they bumped into the planets and each other.

 Comet Hartley 2 is the first "Kuiper Belt" object to undergo the deuterium analysis. Kuiper belt objects formed not far outside our Solar System, and comets that originate there have much shorter orbits than those from the Oort Cloud.

 Image caption Comets carry much more water than asteroids, but it may or may not be like the water found on Earth

 An international team using the Herschel telescope to peer at the comet, they found it had a deuterium fraction much closer to that of our oceans.

 Report co-author Ted Bergin of the University of Michigan said that opened up the possibility that comets at least contributed to our water supply.

 "The reservoir of Earth ocean-like material is much larger than we thought, and it encompasses cometary material, which we hadn't recognised," he told BBC News.

 "We have to think really hard and try to get a better understanding of what is going in our Solar System, and whether you can really rule out comets as the source of Earth's water."

 They might not be ruled out, but they are not the definitive answer either; much of what we believe happened in the early Solar System is based on computer models.

 James Greenwood of Wesleyan University in the US said such models may need adjusting in light of the new evidence - and that more such studies are needed to assess whether many Kuiper Belt objects are like Hartley 2.

 "If the short-period comets are all like this one comet, then this could be a significant source of our early water," he told BBC News.

 "It opens up a new can of worms for us."

 Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatory of Cote d'Azur argues that the result shows that the distinction between the potential water sources may need to be called into question.

 "In the past, scientists thought that these asteroids and comets were completely different classes of bodies. Now, several new results show that primitive asteroids and comets are brothers and sisters," he told BBC News.

 "This new view changes at least the semantics of the question on the origin of the Earth's water. The question becomes more technical: 'from which region of the disc and by which dynamical mechanism came the (objects) that delivered the water to the Earth?'"

 Herschel has some time left to address the question, but what all the researchers agree is that the Atacama Large Millimeter Array of telescopes in Chile - which has just shown off its first results - will soon be able to resolve these questions with never-before-seen sensitivity. |||||

Write a summary.

– Most of the water that fills the world's oceans—and makes up more than half of the human body—may have started out as comets, not asteroids as current theories hold, according to new research. Scientists using the Herschel telescope found that unlike other comets studied, the comet Hartley 2 contains water with the same chemical signature as water on our planet, suggesting that cometary impacts brought the water that covered the rocky and dry early Earth, the BBC reports. Hartley 2 is believed to have formed in the Kuiper belt, not far outside the solar system. Comets studied earlier came from the much more distant Oort cloud and had a different chemical composition, leading scientists to believe only 10% of Earth's water could have come from comets. "It was a big surprise when we saw the ratio was almost the same as what we find in the Earth's oceans," the lead researcher tells Reuters. "It means it is not true any more that a maximum of 10% of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets."


Clouds over Australia are shown. Credit: NASA As if 2016 has not been long enough, the year's dying minute will last an extra second to make up for time lost to Earth's slowing rotation, timekeepers say.

 Countries that use Coordinated Universal Time—several West African nations, Britain, Ireland and Iceland—will add the leap second during the midnight countdown to 2017—making the year's final minute 61 seconds long.

 For others, the timing will be determined by the time zone they live in, relative to UTC.

 "This extra second, or leap second, makes it possible to align astronomical time, which is irregular and determined by Earth's rotation, with UTC which is extremely stable and has been determined by atomic clocks since 1967," the Paris Observatory said in a statement.

 The observatory houses the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), responsible for synchronising time.

 "The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be: 2016 December 31 23h 59m 59s, 2016 December 31 23h 59m 60s, 2017 January 1, 0h 0m 0s," the IERS website states.

 The adjustment is necessary because Earth's rotation is not regular—it sometimes speeds up, sometimes slows down, but is gradually slowing overall.

 This is caused by factors including the Moon's gravitational Earth-braking forces, which give rise to the ocean tides.

 The result is that astronomical time—based on the length of an Earth day— gradually falls out of sync with atomic time—which is measured by nearly 400 super-accurate atomic clocks dotted around the world.

 Leap year, too

 Atomic time or TAI, in turn, is used to determine UTC, used for civil timekeeping globally.

 TAI is exactly 36 seconds ahead of UTC, a difference that keeps growing as leap seconds are added, and will reach 37 seconds on January 1.

 When leap seconds were introduced in 1972, 10 seconds had to be added to UTC, followed by another roughly every 18 months thereafter, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the US Department of Commerce.

 The last was added on June 30, 2015.

 "Leap seconds are added in order to keep the difference between UTC and astronomical time (UT1) to less than 0.9 seconds," the NIST website explains.

 "Usually leap seconds are added when UTC is ahead of UT1 by 0.4 seconds or more."

 The process, it added, can create problems for data logging applications and telecommunications systems.

 "Special attention must be given to these systems each time there is a leap second."

 2016 has also had a leap day—February 29—a four-yearly occurrence to keep the calendar synchronised with Earth's movement around the Sun.

 Explore further: 2016 will be one second longer ||||| Share this page!

 Time zone

 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), UTC +0

 The IANA time zone identifier for UTC is UTC. ||||| What leap seconds are, how they are implemented and their future.

 What is a leap second?

 A leap second is a second added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to keep it synchronized with astronomical time. UTC is an atomic time scale, based on the performance of atomic clocks that are more stable than the Earth's rotational rate. Astronomical time (UT1), or mean solar time, is based on the rotation of Earth, which is irregular.

 There are two main reasons that cause leap seconds to occur. The first is that the duration of the atomic second was measured and defined by comparing cesium clocks to the Ephemeris Time (ET) scale, an obsolete time scale that defined the second as a fraction of the tropical year. The duration of the ephemeris second was slightly shorter than the mean solar second and this characteristic was passed along to the atomic second. If the atomic second had been defined with respect to the mean solar second, it is likely that leap seconds would have been required much less frequently. The second reason for leap seconds is that the speed of the Earth's rotation is not constant. It sometimes speeds up, and sometimes slows down, but when averaged over long intervals the trend indicates that it is gradually slowing. This gradual decrease in the rotational rate is causing the duration of the mean solar second to gradually increase with respect to the atomic second.

 For information about past leap seconds and the measured differences between UTC and UT1, please see the NIST Time Scale Data Archive.

 How often do we have leap seconds?

 Leap seconds are added in order to keep the difference between UTC and astronomical time (UT1) to less than 0.9 seconds. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), measures Earth's rotation and publishes the difference between UT1 and UTC. Usually leap seconds are added when UTC is ahead of UT1 by 0.4 seconds or more. At the time the corrections started in 1972, a necessary correction of ten seconds was made to UTC, and there have been leap seconds about every year and a half (on average). The current difference between UTC and UT1 is shown in our leap second archive web page.

 When do leap seconds occur?

 Leap seconds have always occurred at the end of December or the end of June, on the last second of the UTC day. The designation of the sequence of seconds is:

 23h 59m 59s

 23h 59m 60s

 00h 00m 00s

 Are there benefits and/or detriments to adding leap seconds?

 By keeping Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) within one second of astronomical time, scientists and astronomers observing celestial bodies can use UTC for most purposes. If there were no longer a correction to UTC for leap seconds, then adjustments would have to be made to time stamps and legacy equipment and software which synchronize to UTC for astronomical observations. However, adding a second to UTC can create problems for some systems, including data logging applications, telecommunication systems and time distribution services. Special attention must be given to these systems each time there is a leap second.

 What is the future of leap seconds?

 Some proposals have been made to implement larger corrections like leap hours, which would occur much less often than leap seconds. Also, it has been suggested to stop corrections to UTC and publish the growing difference between UTC and UT1. The relatively small community that needs UT1 could then use the published values as a correction. Discussions of the future of leap seconds are ongoing at meetings of the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R).

 How is a leap second related to a leap year?

 Leap seconds and leap years are both implemented to keep our time in accordance with the position of Earth. However, leap seconds are added when needed, based on measurements, and leap years are regularly occurring events based on set rules. During leap years, an extra day is added as February 29th to keep the calendar synchronized with the precession of the Earth around the Sun. Leap years are necessary because the actual length of the year is 365.2422 days and not 365. The extra day is added every four years to compensate for most of the partial day. However, this is a slight over-compensation, so some century years are not leap years. Only every fourth century year (those equally divisible by 400) is a leap year. For instance, 2000 was a leap year, but 1900, 1800 and 1700 were not.

 For additional information about leap years, please see the exhibit on calendars on our time exhibits page. ||||| If you can't wait for 2016 to be over, I have some bad news; it's going to be a little bit longer than expected. In July of this year, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS)—which regulates the international clock—announced that 2016 will end in a leap second. An extra tick will be inserted into the year to make up for unpredictable variations to the Earth's rotation, and that means before we hop into 2017, the clock will strike an unusual 23:59:60.

 Leap seconds are not particularly strange. We had one back in the summer of 2015, and when everybody is ready for one, you hardly even notice that anything has happened. But these leap seconds do pose unique problems for timekeeping computers, which are unable to conceive of a 61st second by the very nature of their coding. In a way, it's a Y2K-esque problem. Simple math for a human, borderline brain-frying for a computer.

 This is a particular problem for companies like Google, which run Network Time Protocol servers, internet clocks your laptop sets its watch to. The immediately obvious solution is to add an extra second to these servers, bam. But as Google points out in a blog post, that's not as easy as it sounds because most computers and operating systems don't understand a 61st second. In order for that to work, literally every device involved has to understand that something weird is going on and that's only happening this one time. In the past, attempting this solution has caused a number of real problems.

 So Google came up with a different, extremely elegant plan. The weird part is that it will take 20 hours:

 Instead of adding a single extra second to the end of the day, we'll run the clocks 0.0014% slower across the ten hours before and ten hours after the leap second, and "smear" the extra second across these twenty hours.

 If you check the math you can see how this "smeared time" works:

 20 hours = 1,200 minutes = 72,000 seconds

 72,000 seconds x .000014 (.0014%) = 1.08 seconds

 Though given that extra .08 second on there, it seems like the .0014% number is probably rounded, or altered in some other way.

 This isn't a brand new idea. Google's first came up with it in 2008, and other companies in similar positions have tried variations, though the specifics vary. For the 2015 leap second, Amazon Web Services slowed its clocks by 1/86400 (.001157407%) for a day before the jump, smearing the extra second over the preceding 24 hours so its clocks would be one second slow at the time of the one-second jump. Another cloud company, Akamai, is doing the same thing this year, using a 24-hour smear.

 Google's 20-hour smear is an outlier, but not due to any illusions that this method is superior. As Google's developer page notes, the choice is to make things easy on Google's existing infrastructure, and the company proposes that everyone adopt a standard noon-to-noon, 24-hour smear, with the leap second dead center, instead of on the end.

 The end result? With any luck you won't notice a damn thing. But when you're watching the clock tick down to the first second of 2017, take a moment to appreciate all the math that's being put to work to give you that precious little quantifiable illusion we call time. ||||| Like a man eager to show off his new watch, Google is encouraging anyone running IT operations to ask it for the time.

 The company will let anyone use its NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers, a move to help IT shops cope with the next “leap second,” which will be tacked onto 2016 just after midnight on Dec. 31.

 Leap seconds help to keep clocks aligned with Earth’s rotation, which can vary due to geologic and even weather conditions. But an extra second can wreak havoc with applications and services that depend on systems being tightly synchronized.

 Most Internet-connected devices get their time through NTP, an open-source technology that's used all over the world. NTP has its own problems, mainly around funding, but it's long been the standard. Google runs its own NTP servers and uses them to ease its systems through leap seconds, according to Michael Shields, technical lead on the company’s Time Team, in a blog post on Wednesday.

 Time synchronization is critical for many things Google’s systems do, such as keeping replicas up to date, determining which data-affecting operation happened last, and correctly reporting the order of searches and clicks, the company says.

 Ordinary operating systems can’t accommodate a minute that’s 61 seconds long, so some organizations have used special-case workarounds for the extra second. But sometimes these methods raise issues, like what happens to write operations that take place during that second. At times in the past, some Google systems have refused to work when faced with a leap second, though this didn’t affect the company’s services, a Google representative said.

 So Google will modify its NTP servers to run clocks 0.0014 percent slower for 10 hours before the leap second and for 10 hours afterward. When the leap second takes place, they will have accounted for it already. Google’s been using this technique, called “smeared time,” since a leap second in 2008.

 Enterprises running virtual-machine instances on Google Compute Engine, and those using Google APIs, will want to keep their own systems synchronized with Google’s slightly slower clocks during that 20-hour period. Client systems will also have to be set to that time in order to work with those servers. And it won’t work to run some servers on smeared time and some on regular time, because then clients won’t know which time to follow, Google says.

 So the company is making its NTP servers available free through the Google Public NTP service. Users can take advantage of the service by configuring their network settings to use time.google.com as their NTP server. The company laid out detailed instructions for synchronizing systems to its smeared time.

 Google won’t be the only company smearing time on Dec. 31. Akamai plans to slow down its clocks over a 24-hour period around the leap second. Amazon and Microsoft have done the same thing in the past.

 In fact, the big cloud companies look ready to standardize on a 24-hour “leap smear.” Google plans to use the longer transition for the next leap second, partly to ease more slowly into extra second and partly to align itself with other companies. There’s no date yet for the next leap second, but Google expects it to come in 2018.

 Leap seconds began in 1972 and are now administered by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS). They’re needed because Earth’s rotation isn’t uniform. It’s affected by things like tides in the oceans and the movement of magma beneath the Earth’s crust. Atomic clocks, which set the standard for most timekeeping, are more consistent than that. |||||

Write a summary.

– For many, 2016 can't end soon enough. For everyone, though, it's actually going to last one second longer than usual. With New Year's Eve approaching, outlets such as Phys.org are reminding people that an extra "leap second" will be added to the final day of 2016 in order to keep our earthly time-keeping measures in sync. No, this won't affect countdowns to ball drops—the second is incorporated into the day in far more subtle ways—but if you happened to watch the online clock counting Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, you'd see the quirk of it going from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60, instead of flipping to 00:00:00. A more technical explanation: "Leap seconds are added in order to keep the difference between UTC and astronomical time (UT1) to less than 0.9 seconds," per the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Wonky, yes, but for companies such as Google that operate Network Time Protocol servers, the leap second is indeed a big deal—and a post at Popular Mechanics praises the company's "extremely elegant solution" to the issue. Google will "smear" that extra second, as it explains in a blog post. "Instead of adding a single extra second to the end of the day, we'll run the clocks 0.0014% slower across the ten hours before and ten hours after the leap second, and 'smear' the extra second across these twenty hours." Other cloud companies such as Akamai use a similar approach but over 24 hours, notes PCWorld, which expects this longer "leap smear" to be standard when the next leap second rolls around, probably in 2018. (If you're planning a trip to ring in 2017 somewhere, this list might help.)


Facebook will employ face recognition software to make tagging easier (Credit: Facebook)

 Just a few hours after Time magazine anointed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg "Person of the Year," Zuckerberg's company announced yet another new service that will attempt to recognize pictures of your friends based on their facial characteristics.

 Starting next week, Facebook will start using face recognition technology to assist its users in tagging pictures of friends.

 Privacy Remains the Same

 Facebook officials told me that the new service will not change the privacy settings related to tagging -- users will still get a notice if they are tagged and can remove the tag of any photos. Also, users continue to have control over who tags them.

 Another comforting fact about the new tagging service is that it's not automatic. When you upload an album, Facebook will attempt to recognize the people in it. If it finds what it thinks is a match it will ask you to confirm. If you do nothing, the photo won't be tagged.

 As has long been the case with photos, you will only be able to tag people you are friends with and, presumably to improve accuracy, Facebook will only compare the pictures against a relatively small sub-set of your friends -- perhaps as few as the 30 people you communicate with most often, which, according to computer scientists who study face recognition, can improve the accuracy.

 Facebook will also be allowing users to opt-out of having their name suggested to friends during the photo tagging process. If you disable "Suggest photos of me to friends," your name will "no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually," according to the Facebook blog.

 From a privacy standpoint this move should have little impact but it is yet one more example of how Facebook is encouraging people to share information, including photos

 Hard to Do

 Face recognition remain hard to do said Erick Learned-Miller, an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts whose research includes "machine learning" and "computer vision. And it's especially difficult if you're using a very large database. "The larger the number of people you are trying to identify, the more difficult the problem" he said in an interview.

 "Up to now the reliability of face recognition is not very good," he said. "if you could be right more than half the time that would be very very good."

 Learned-Miller calls Facebook's plan to allow the user to confirm whether the photograph is accurately identified "makes a lot of sense," referring to the process as a "human in the loop method where you don't commit to a particular decision but you try to use the computer as a screen step that improves your own efficiency."

 It also helps that Facebook can take advantage of previous tagging. If a person has been tagged in multiple photographs, that improves the chances of it working, according to computer scientists I spoke with.

 Rolling Out Gradually

 Facebook will roll out the service to a small number of users next week and expand from there. It will initially only be available in the United States.

 This announcement follows one in September when Facebook announced group tagging, an improved photo viewer and higher-resolution images. More than 100 million photos are uploaded daily, according to Facebook officials.

 Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from several technology companies including Facebook.

 Follow Larry Magid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larrymagid ||||| Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking service, is likely to generate 2010 revenue of about $2 billion, a larger sum than projected earlier, according to three people familiar with the matter.

 Sales will more than double from 2009, said the people, who declined to be identified because the privately held company doesn’t disclose revenue. Facebook had $700 million to $800 million in sales last year, and the 2010 figure was previously expected to be closer to $1.5 billion, according to two other people familiar with the matter earlier this year.

 Facebook’s more than half a billion users have made it an attractive target for advertisers, including Coca-Cola Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Adidas AG. In October, Facebook surpassed Yahoo! Inc. when ranked by the number of global users, making it No. 3 behind Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to ComScore Inc., a research firm in Reston, Virginia.

 “The love affair of consumers with social networks is an abiding one,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC in San Mateo, California. “All the big brands are there.”

 Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, declined to comment.

 Facebook, founded in 2004, would reach $2 billion faster than Yahoo and at almost the same pace as Google. Yahoo, founded in 1994, posted revenue of $1.6 billion in 2003 and $3.6 billion in 2004. Google, founded in 1998, reached $1.5 billion in 2003 and then $3.2 billion in 2004.

 ‘Person of Year’

 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive officer, was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” yesterday. The publication noted his role in “creating a new system of exchanging information” and “changing how we all live our lives.”

 Zuckerberg, 26, created Facebook for college students when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. After opening the site to people outside of higher education, the company surpassed News Corp.’s MySpace as the No. 1 social network two years ago. Facebook users now post a billion pieces of content, such as photos and messages, every day, Time said.

 Facebook has maintained ad prices, even as its user growth creates a surge of space for commercial messages, the company said in August. Facebook also makes money from a credits program, which lets people buy virtual items in online games.

 Figuring It Out

 “People are learning and they’re figuring out how they can work with Facebook,” said Christian Juhl, a president at digital ad agency Razorfish, part of Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA. “You can prove success without a massive expenditure.”

 Facebook is making gains in so-called display ads -- the banners, videos and other graphical promotions that appear on websites. It may grab about 9.4 percent of that market in the U.S. this year, up from 6.6 percent in 2009, according to EMarketer Inc. in New York.

 Yahoo, which leads the market, will have about 16.2 percent, down from 16.5 percent, the firm estimates. Google, which is stronger in Internet-search ads, may take 6.7 percent, up from 4.7 percent.

 Facebook’s growth is also attracting investor interest. The company has a valuation of $43.1 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for privately held stocks. That’s up more than 60 percent from three months ago and almost quadruple the level in March.

 At the same time, Facebook’s expansion has increased concerns about privacy. After lawmakers and advocacy groups complained that it shares too much personal data, the company introduced simpler privacy controls in May and said it was reducing the amount of user information that’s publicly available.

 “They’ve done a better job recently around privacy, which alleviates a lot of the concern,” Juhl said. “That’s something we’ll always have to keep watching. But that’s nothing new -- whether it’s Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook.”

 To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Get ready for another Facebook update: Next week, the site will start rolling out new face-recognition technology for photos, the Huffington Post reports. It’s “comforting” to know that the service won’t be automatic, writes Larry Magid. If the site thinks it recognizes someone, it will ask you for confirmation. Ignore it, and no tagging takes place. Privacy settings won’t change—you’ll still be alerted when you’re tagged and able to remove any unwanted tags. You’ll also be able to opt out of the service, meaning the site won’t try to recognize you in your friends’ pictures. Face-recognition technologies are still fairly unreliable, says an expert; perhaps for that reason, Facebook will attempt to identify only those of your friends you contact the most. Meanwhile, the site is expected to generate $2 billion in revenue this year, insiders tell Bloomberg.


Here is a news article: By Piper Wheeler

 In a gleaming lab in Emeryville’s biotech corridor, food scientists are busy perfecting what they hope is the future of dairy.

 Local startup Ripple Foods amassed $15 million in venture capital funding during 2015. Now the company is gearing up to launch its first run of products, expected to arrive in an unnamed national chain sometime this month. Ripple will join established brands — Almond Breeze, Rice Dream, So Delicious — in the “alternative dairy space,” a market whose current value tops $2 billion per year, according to some analysts.

 Ripple founders Adam Lowry and Neil Renninger are plant-food proselytizers who aren’t afraid of hard science. While Ripple is their first food-focused venture, both have experience in climate science research and developing sustainable products.

 Lowry is a former climate scientist from the Carnegie Institution for Science who was a co-founder of the San Francisco-based nontoxic, biodegradable cleaning supply company, Method Products. Renninger co-founded Emeryville’s Amyris, Inc., a company that produces renewable alternatives to petroleum-based products.

 At Ripple, Lowry and Renninger have developed a method of isolating the natural proteins found in split yellow peas to create a nutritious goo. Unlike the soy-derived proteins that give soy milk its distinctive flavor, Ripple’s pea protein isolates have an enviable quality: they taste of nothing at all.

 This smooth, white, high-protein substance is blended with water, sunflower oil, stabilizers and flavoring to produce a variety of “milks” — plain, sweetened, vanilla and chocolate. The result is a vegan drink that contains 8 grams of protein — the same as cow’s milk. As many non-dairy beverages lack protein, this fact alone may draw consumers.

 Ripple is also free of common allergens like soy and nuts. It’s free of gluten as well as GMOs, which will also be a major selling point for dairy-free consumers who keep strict tabs on their food’s sourcing.

 The “sweetened” version will contain about half the sugar that is found in a serving of cow’s milk. Nutritionists might point out that the cane sugar used to sweeten Ripple beverages is not quite equivalent to the sugars naturally present in cow’s milk. Renninger, however, said that his recipe’s high-protein content balances the sugar, and that Ripple is indeed a low glycemic beverage.

 A serving will also provide 45% of daily calcium needs.

 “And the calcium comes from the protein, meaning it’s more bio-available and easily absorbed,” Renninger said.

 On the other side of the table, Lowry is eager to hype his product’s environmental bona fides, and has clearly been spending time with some drought-conscious Californians.

 “Every single gallon of almond milk requires a thousand gallons of water!” Lowry said, still incredulous. (This number is up for debate, and it changes depending on methods of calculation.) Regardless, cow’s milk is still worse: depending on who you ask, it demands from 125% to 200% as much water as almond milk.

 The water required to create Lowry and Renninger’s plant-based milks is, in comparison, a mere drop in the bucket. Ripple’s founders estimate that their product uses 96% less water than almond milk, and 98.5% less water than cow’s milk.

 For now, French-raised peas are causing Ripple’s carbon footprint to shoot up a bit. “It’s neck and neck with almond milk,” Lowry said, with some consternation. “But that will improve with U.S.-grown peas.”

 By the end of 2016, all ingredients will be sourced entirely from the U.S., the founders said.

 Also in the works is an organic label, which Renninger acknowledges their target audience will look for.

 “Really, though, the product sells itself,” Lowry said, lauding the milk’s body, protein and taste.

 Consumers will decide for themselves before too long. Bay Area stores will begin stocking Ripple products this month.

 Connect with Ripple Foods on Facebook and Twitter.

 Connect with NOSH on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the free NOSH Weekly email for all your East Bay food news. ||||| Dive Brief:

 Pea-based milk producer Ripple could disrupt an already disruptive plant-based dairy industry with new technology and promoting itself as having additional health and sustainability benefits as compared to category leaders like almond and soy milk.

 Ripple developed a technology the company is currently trying to patent that separates the pea's health benefits from the flavor and color.

 According to Ripple, it has a 93% smaller carbon footprint compared to traditional dairy.

 Dive Insight:

 One drawback to certain plants is that while they provide desirable health benefits, manufacturers have a difficult time engineering the plant's flavor and color out of the resulting product. If Ripple's technology were widely available, manufacturers could use more plant types to add a variety of health benefits and functionality to food and beverage products.

 Pea-based milk can also lead to other pea-based dairy products, such as yogurt. With its own high protein content, pea-based milk yogurt could give the Greek yogurt industry stiff competition. And that could be in terms of both breakfast and other eating occasions, as Chobani is currently exploring. |||||
A summary of this is?

– A new alternative to cow milk comes from a source you wouldn't expect: peas. Ripple Foods is about to roll out the product nationally, first at Whole Foods and then at Target, reports VegNews.com. "It's creamy, sweet, and—don't worry—tastes nothing like peas," says a post at Co.Exist. The idea is attracting plenty of buzz because of a slew of positives, the notable one being that the drink has 8 grams of protein per serving, the same amount as milk from cows and eight times the amount of almond milk. "As many non-dairy beverages lack protein, this fact alone may draw consumers," observes a post at Berkeleyside.com. It also has 50% more calcium than dairy milk, and a much smaller carbon footprint than either dairy or almond milk. "The primary challenge is one of flavor," says Ripple co-founder Adam Lowry. "If you just make pea milk the way that you make almond milk, with regular yellow peas, you can get a very high-protein beverage, but it frankly tastes terrible." The company says it has patented a system to keep the nutrients but ditch the pea flavor and color, a method that involves blending it with water, sunflower oil, and stabilizers. If this system proves legit, it could open up all kinds of plants to the process and "disrupt an already disruptive plant-based dairy industry," notes a post at Food Dive. Consumers can get their first taste at Whole Foods starting May 2, with a price of $4.99 for a 48-ounce bottle. (One judge says skim milk isn't really milk.)


Kevin Curran, a veteran comedy writer who spent 15 years on “The Simpsons,” died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles after a long illness. He was 59.

 Curran graduated from Harvard College in 1979, where he served as an editor for the Harvard Lampoon. While at Harvard, Curran met Al Jean, who would go on to become the showrunner of Fox’s “The Simpsons.” Curran had been on staff at “The Simpsons” since 2001, most recently serving as co-executive producer.

 “He was one of the funniest guys I ever met,” Jean said. “He also had one of the sweetest, biggest hearts. He really was a terrific guy.”

 Notable episodes Curran wrote for “The Simpsons” include “Don’t Fear the Roofer” (2005) and “I’m Spelling as Fast as I Can” (2003). He conceived the idea and co-wrote the 2002 “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episode “The Island of Dr. Hibbert.” Curran won three Emmy Awards during his tenure on the show.

 In addition, Curran won three consecutive Emmys from 1985-87 as part of the writing team on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman.” In the 1990s, he worked on Fox’s “Married With Children” and was also an executive producer of the WB Network’s “Unhappily Ever After” alongside “Married With Children” creator Ron Leavitt. Curran’s other TV credits included the short-lived ABC comedy “The Good Life.”

 Curran is survived by a son and a daughter that he had with his former partner, author Helen Fielding.

 Friends and former colleagues took to social media to pay tribute to Curran.

 .@TheSimpsons V v sad at the passing of Kevin Curran brilliantly funny and true friend https://t.co/hCoPUEV6xx — Al Jean (@AlJean) October 25, 2016

 He worked with me at the old Letterman show, a millionyears ago. He was sweet, original and hilarious. Very sad to hear he is gone. https://t.co/REmzcQprjS — Merrill Markoe (@Merrillmarkoe) October 25, 2016

 Cynthia Littleton contributed to this report. ||||| The interactive transcript could not be loaded.

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 This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| Kevin Curran, a veteran TV comedy writer-producer who won six Emmys as part of the staffs of The Simpsons and Late Night With David Letterman, died today at his Los Angeles home after a lengthy illness. He was 59. Simpsons showrunner Al Jean, who met Curran while they were at Harvard in the late 1970s, confirmed the news of Twitter:

 .@TheSimpsons V v sad at the passing of Kevin Curran brilliantly funny and true friend https://t.co/hCoPUEV6xx — Al Jean (@AlJean) October 25, 2016

 NBC

 Curran wrote nearly a dozen episodes of Fox’s The Simpsons and had been part of its producing team for the past 15 years, most recently as co-EP. He shared three Emmys for Outstanding Animated Program among 14 nominations spanning 2002-2016. Earlier in his career, he shared three consecutive writing Emmys for NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman, as the show began to dominate late-night TV and shake up the TV comedy world.

 Jean said today in a statement: “Kevin Curran was a sweet, brilliant man who said many hilarious things, some unprintable, others which will live forever in a children’s cartoon.”

 During his career, Curran also wrote for and held producer roles on the WB’s Unhappily Ever After (1997-99), NBC’s The Good Life (1994) and another early Fox comedy Married … With Children (1990-97). On the latter show, he also provided the voice for the wisecracking family dog Buck in dozens of episodes. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Kevin Curran might not have been a household name, but there were few Americans he didn't get a laugh out of during a decades-long career in TV comedy writing and producing. Curran, a six-time Emmy winner who has died from complications from cancer at the age of 59, joined the producing team of The Simpsons in 2001 and wrote a dozen episodes, Deadline reports. He won three of his Emmys with The Simpsons and three with Late Night With David Letterman, where he was part of the writing team from 1985 to 1987, reports Variety. He came up with the show's first Top Ten list: "'Top Ten Words That Almost Rhyme with ‘Peas.'" Curran's other TV credits included Married With Children, where he was a producer from 1990 to 1993—and provided the voice of Buck the Dog. His comedy career started at Harvard, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. "Kevin Curran was a sweet, brilliant man who said many hilarious things, some unprintable, others which will live forever in a children’s cartoon," Simpsons showrunner Al Jean, who first met him at Harvard, said in a statement. Curran is survived by a son and daughter from his long relationship with Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding. (We lost Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon last year.)


– A 13-year-old girl was found dead in her California home Tuesday, and her 14-year-old brother has been arrested on suspicion of her murder, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Sacramento Bee, the body of Ashley Wood was found by her mother in a bedroom in their home in Rocklin. A neighbor called 911 after hearing Ashley's mother yell for help, FOX40 reports. Police arrived at the scene and tracked Ashley's brother to a field a mile away from the home. His name isn't being released because he's a minor. However if he's charged with murder, it could be as an adult. No motive has been identified. Ashley suffered blunt-force trauma, but police aren't offering more specifics. There were multiple crime scenes within the home. Ashley's former coach said the girl was a talented gymnast. And Ashley once hoped to compete in the Olympics, CBS Sacramento reports. "They seemed like an average family to me," a neighbor tells FOX40. "They seemed pretty happy." The home where Ashley's body was found belongs to Jeff Wood, possibly the same Jeff Wood who is a prosecutor for the local district attorney's office.

Expand this summary.

ROCKLIN (CBS) – More questions than answers surround the empty home at the end of Monument Springs Drive in Rocklin.

 A day after a 13-year-old girl was killed, neighbors are still in shock.

 “I broke down in tears. It’s really sad,” said Gail Gurkin. She moved into the neighborhood about a week ago and says the crime caught everyone by surprise.

 “It hits close to home,” she Gurkin.

 Ashley Wood’s mother found her body in her bedroom just before 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

 Wood’s 14-year-old sibling was later picked up by police as the only suspect.

 “It’s hard to believe this is happening. It’s sad,” said Gurkin.

 Wood attended Sierra Elementary school before leaving the school system in 2013.

 For the yearbook, Wood was asked where she wanted to be in 10 years. Her response: “In the Olympics, doing gymnastics.”

 The dedicated athlete trained at Extreme Gymnastics and Cheer. Staff there tells CBS13 that she stopped coming to their location about five years ago.

 “They’re going to need to be around family and loved ones right now,” said Gurkin.

 With few answers from investigating agencies, parents in a neighborhood filled with children are looking for explanations.

 “It’s a difficult situation. It’s something you don’t think you’ll ever talk to your child about.

 Gurkin’s young daughter had seen the police cars and tape and was asking questions.

 “I just needed to be honest with her and tell her what’s going on,” said Gurkin.

 Police issued a statement Tuesday morning but left out many details including the motivation, what was used to kill Wood, and whether her 14-year-old brother would be charged with her death.

 The Department of Justice is involved in the investigation. Rocklin police say it’s to provide an extra layer of transparency. The home where Ashley Wood was killed is owned by Jeffery Ronald Wood. A person by that name also works at the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.

 On Facebook, Wood’s oldest brother posted a picture of him and his sister with the caption, “Forever in my heart.” ||||| "Yesterday was a very dark day for our Rocklin community," Police Chief Ron Lawrence said in a statement. "On behalf of the Rocklin Police Department, I send our heartfelt condolences to the victim's family. Words cannot adequately express our deep sorrow for all involved." ||||| Rocklin police identified the 13-year-old girl killed in her home Tuesday as Ashley Wood and said the suspect in her killing, a 14-year-old boy who also lived in the house, was being held in a juvenile detention facility Wednesday.

 Rocklin police spokesmen also said Wednesday they did not know if the teens were related, though other media outlets have reported that officers described the boy and girl as relatives or siblings.

 The boy’s name has not been released because he is a minor.

 Public records show the home where Ashley Wood died is co-owned by a man with the same name, Jeffrey Ronald Wood, as a senior prosecutor with the Placer County District Attorney’s Office. Jeffrey Wood could not be reached Wednesday, and the District Attorney’s Office has declined comment.

 Condolences for the girl’s family began to appear online Wednesday.

 “Yesterday was a very dark day for our Rocklin Community,” Police Chief Ron Lawrence said in a written statement posted on Twitter. “On behalf of the Rocklin Police Department, I send our heartfelt condolences to the victim’s family. Words cannot adequately express our deep sorrow for all involved.”

 Police said that on Tuesday morning, the boy fled the newer, upscale home on Monument Springs Drive, near Interstate 80 in Rocklin. He was found in a field about a mile away after a half-hour search by multiple police agencies.

 The boy was taken to the Placer County Probation Juvenile Detention Facility in Auburn, awaiting arraignment. California law allows 14-year-olds to be charged as adults in murder cases.

 The homicide investigation started after police received reports of a disturbance at a home on the 6700 block of Monument Springs Drive at 10:47 a.m. on Tuesday.

 One neighbor told The Sacramento Bee she heard a woman’s screams and called 911.

 Once at the scene, officers found Ashley dead in a bedroom. She appeared to have suffered blunt-force trauma, a police spokesman said without elaborating.

 The girl’s mother found her body, authorities said.

 Rocklin police officials said the department is being assisted by the California Department of Justice.

 Investigators remained in the home until 11:37 p.m. Tuesday after obtaining a search warrant; they collected evidence from numerous places within the home, a police news release said. Information regarding the weapon used would not be released, police said.

 Dena Erwin, a spokeswoman for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday that the Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy.

 Public records show the home on Monument Springs Drive is owned by Jeffrey Wood, 50, and Sonya Wood, 46.

 A Facebook page for a Jeff Wood shows him with Sonya Wood, whom he calls the “love of my life.” Both of their Facebook pages contain pictures from 2009 or 2010 of three children, two of whom, a girl and a boy, appear to be of elementary school age.

 On Sonya Wood’s Facebook page, there are pictures of a small, blonde girl named Ashley competing in gymnastics, medals draped around her neck.

 More recent photos on another family member’s Facebook page show the boy and girl as young teens. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video

 ROCKLIN -- A talented gymnast, a fierce competitor who was loved by her teammates.

 That's how coach Lisa Porch described Ashley Wood after the 13-year-old with so much potential was killed.

 "I'm pretty shocked that she's dead," said neighbor Tyler Nguyen.

 One day later, neighbors are still disturbed and in disbelief that a girl from a seemingly happy family is gone.

 "They seemed like an average family to me. We would just wave and they seemed pretty happy," Nguyen said.

 Rocklin police responded to a home on Monument Springs Drive around 11 a.m. Tuesday.

 A woman who lives two doors down told FOX40 off camera she called 911 after hearing Wood's mother yelling for help and screaming 'Oh my god.'

 Police say when they arrived at the house they found Wood in her bedroom with blunt-force trauma to her head.

 The 14-year-old relative ran a mile into a field before police caught up with him and arrested him for the crime.

 Records indicate the house is owned by Jeff Wood.

 A man by that name also works as a prosecutor for the Placer County District Attorney's Office.

 "We are aware of the case and unable to comment at this time," said Assistant District Attorney Jeff Wilson in a written statement.

 Neighbors say they're praying for a family coping with the loss of a daughter and the arrest of a teenage relative accused of killing her.

 The teenage suspects identity has not been released because he's a minor.

 He's in juvenile hall in Auburn. |||||


Article:
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The cow is considered sacred by India's Hindu majority

 The western Indian state of Gujarat has passed a law making the slaughter of cows punishable with life imprisonment.

 Under an amendment to the state's Animal Preservation Act, those found guilty of transporting beef will also be jailed for 10 years.

 The cow is considered sacred by India's Hindu majority, and killing cows is illegal in many states.

 But the new amendment means Gujarat now has the toughest laws on the issue in the country.

 Offenders will face heavy fines, as well as time behind bars. The penalty for either act has been doubled from 50,000 rupees ($771; £618) to 100,000 rupees.

 Gujarat Minister of State Pradipsinh Jadeja told reporters that the cow was a symbol of Indian culture and the amendments to the act had been made "in consultation with the people".

 Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has also spoken repeatedly of "harsh" punishment for those who kill cows.

 The new law will come into effect once approved by the state's governor. ||||| FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2015 file photo, a student activist holds a placard during a protest denouncing the killing of a 52-year-old Muslim farmer Mohammad Akhlaq by villagers upon hearing rumors that... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2015 file photo, a student activist holds a placard during a protest denouncing the killing of a 52-year-old Muslim farmer Mohammad Akhlaq by villagers upon hearing rumors that the family was eating beef, a taboo for many among India's majority Hindu population, in New Delhi,... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2015 file photo, a student activist holds a placard during a protest denouncing the killing of a 52-year-old Muslim farmer Mohammad Akhlaq by villagers upon hearing rumors that the family was eating beef, a taboo for many among India's majority Hindu population, in New Delhi,... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2015 file photo, a student activist holds a placard during a protest denouncing the killing of a 52-year-old Muslim farmer Mohammad Akhlaq by villagers upon hearing rumors that... (Associated Press)

 NEW DELHI (AP) — A Muslim man beaten by a mob that accused him of transporting cows for slaughter has died in western India, police said Wednesday, in the latest violence by Hindu vigilante groups enraged over treatment of the animal they consider sacred.

 Pehlu Khan died late Tuesday of injuries sustained when he and 14 other men were brutally beaten three days earlier in Rajasthan state, police said.

 Hindus, who form 80 percent of India's 1.3 billion population, consider cows to be sacred and for many eating beef is taboo. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned.

 The men had bought the dairy cows at a cattle fair and were taking them home in neighboring Haryana state when the mob stopped the trucks, pulled out the men and beat them, said the duty officer at the police control room in Behror town, where Saturday's attack took place.

 Behror is about 155 kilometers (95 miles) southwest of India's capital, New Delhi.

 Indian television channels broadcast video of the men being beaten with sticks and iron rods. One of the truck drivers, a Hindu, was released by the mob, but was warned not to transport cattle in his truck.

 No arrests have been made, the police officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

 Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office in 2014, hard-line Hindus have been demanding that India ban beef sales — a key industry for many within India's poor, minority Muslim community. There has also been a sharp rise in the activities of self-styled Hindu cow-protection groups that stop trucks on highways and attack anyone transporting bovine animals.

 Rumors of beef eating by Muslims have sparked violence in several places in northern India. About two years ago, a man was beaten to death by a mob over rumors his family had eaten beef, and two others were killed for allegedly transporting cows for slaughter. |||||Summary:

– A Muslim man beaten by a mob that accused him of transporting cows for slaughter has died in western India, police said Wednesday, in the latest violence by Hindu vigilante groups enraged over treatment of the animal they consider sacred. Pehlu Khan died late Tuesday of injuries sustained when he and 14 other men were brutally beaten three days earlier in Rajasthan state, police said. The men had bought the dairy cows at a cattle fair and were taking them home in neighboring Haryana state when the mob stopped the trucks, pulled out the men, and beat them, said the duty officer at the police control room in Behror town, where Saturday's attack took place. Indian television channels broadcast video of the men being beaten with sticks and iron rods, the AP reports. No arrests have been made. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office in 2014, hard-line Hindus have been demanding that India ban beef sales—a key industry for many within India's poor, minority Muslim community. There has also been a sharp rise in the activities of self-styled Hindu cow-protection groups that stop trucks on highways and attack anyone transporting bovine animals. Rumors of beef eating by Muslims have sparked violence in several places in northern India. About two years ago, a man was beaten to death by a mob over rumors his family had eaten beef, and two others were killed for allegedly transporting cows for slaughter. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned. The BBC reports that Gujarat state recently enacted the nation's toughest laws on the matter—slaughtering cows there is now punishable by life in prison.