News Briefs 10-12-2012

Survive the Apocalypse in style with a Mystic Mayan Power Cloak. Also available for pets.

• When Homo sapiens hit upon the power of art.
• The Flores Hobbit's face revealed.
• Human DNA study finds many genetic mutations are rare and recent.
• Mexican archaeologists discover 2,000-year-old Mayan objects.
• Indiana Jones and the REAL crystal skull: Disney sued over claims film was based on mysterious skull 'stolen' from Mayan ruins by 'plundering' British treasure hunter.
• Love's big secret isn't a secret: Play hard to get.
• Verison's creepy idea to spy on TV viewers. Other companies have creepy ideas too.
• When deciding whether to give a job candidate an interview, nearly all U.S. employers turn to Facebook and other social media for their answer.
• French catfish hunt pigeons - on land. With video.
• Rez monsters: Bizarre monsters and spirits attract interest on Navajo Nation.
• Prime Minister Medvedev jokes about Russian leaders being given secret files on extraterrestrials who visit Earth and never leave.
• For the first time ever, a parrot has successfully trained a human to design and build robots specifically for the parrot's use and entertainment. ‌With video.
• New evidence that BP knowingly downplayed huge scale of oil leak in 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
• Chinese factory workers sleep among piles of doll parts as they churn out Christmas presents.
• Workers at Jaguar Land Rover get bacon sandwich as their Christmas bonus.
• Monkey's Christmas present makes him angry.
• Robots and Robber Barons.
• Revolutionary 'contact lens' loaded with stem cells may heal eyes naturally, even restore sight.
• 1970s artist renderings of NASA's future space stations.

Quote of the Day:

Richard Nixon, the US President in 1972, had announced earlier that year that Apollo 17 would be the last mission to the Moon for the foreseeable future. Its launch on December 7 was a bittersweet moment for those involved in the US space programme and for all those who had followed their incredible exploits. Among those watching the launch was John Logsdon, now a professor at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

"There was an undertone of melancholy. We had done those wonderful missions and that was the end of it."

The event was the first night launch of the powerful Saturn V rocket. For a moment night turned to day as the fire from its five F1 engines bathed the Kennedy Space Center with an incandescent glow. Then, as Apollo 17 surged upward like a fiery angel, darkness.

Back on Earth, the Watergate scandal had broken, President Nixon was making plans to begin a Christmas mass bombing campaign on the Vietnamese and the US was riven with conflict and protest.

Governments 'too inefficient' for future Moon landings.