Features

SEOUL — The global launch of Samsung’s latest smartphone has been upstaged by South Korean mobile network companies.

SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile carrier, said it will start selling the Galaxy S5 on Thursday, two weeks before the scheduled sales launch on April 11.

Samsung said in a statement that it is “very puzzled” by SK Telecom’s decision and is deciding how to respond. It said its schedule of overseas launches remains unchanged.

Other mobile operators, KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp., are following SK Telecom’s move to release the phone early.

The unusual step comes as SK Telecom and other mobile carriers face a 45 day suspension from accepting new customers as a penalty for providing illegal phone subsidies.

South Korea’s telecommunications regulator put two other mobile carriers on suspension from this month while SK Telecom must halt selling new phones starting April 5, a week before the Galaxy S5’s global launch.

Mobile carriers already have the S5 in stock as Samsung provided them for marketing activities and to fulfil pre-orders on the launch date.

Samsung Electronics announced the latest iteration of its Galaxy S smartphone last month in Barcelona.

The world’s largest smartphone maker refrained from packing too many new features into the phone, saying the S5 will go back to basics. But the S5 comes with tweaks that are intended to appeal to fitness fans, such as a built-in heart rate monitor, pedometer and fitness tracker.

SK Telecom said the S5 is available for 866,800 won ($808) without two-year contract.

BASEL – With their hundreds of years of watchmaking experience, Swiss watchmakers can afford to take a long view of technological fads and fashions. So-called smartwatches, packing computing power into a wrist-sized gadget, aren’t in their plans for now.

Technology groups from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.  to Sony Corp. are counting on wearable electronic devices able to hook up to the Internet, melding fashion and technology in what could be the next mass consumer trend.

Yet so far the Swiss see little appeal in such devices.

“There’s a lot of noise about smartwatches, but you don’t see them on people’s wrists,” Francois Thiebaud, head of Swatch Group SA’s Tissot brand, told Reuters in an interview at a watch fair in Basel.

“We don’t want to do anything that doesn’t add value for the customer, we’re not interested in launching a gadget watch,” Thiebaud said.

Family-owned Patek Philippe and La Montre Hermes, the watch unit of luxury goods group Hermes International SA, don’t see smartwatches as a threat for their business, their heads said. 

Both Patek’s Thierry Stern and Hermes’ Luc Perramond said their target market was different from the young buyers who might be looking for something to wear on their wrists.

“When they grow older,” Perramond said, “that may be a watch.” 

Yet no consumer goods maker can afford to turn a completely blind eye to global technological advances.

Thiebaud said Tissot, together with parent Swatch Group, had set up a group to assess the potential of launching a watch connected to the Internet, but no final decision had been made.

Huge potential 

Swatch Group Chief Executive Nick Hayek said last week that the company, the world’s biggest watchmaker, had been approached by several major technology companies for a partnership in smartwatches.

But Hayek was not keen on entering any new venture, after past deals with Microsoft Corp. and Tiffany and Co.  ended in litigation.

Analysts, however, see huge potential in wearable electronics, with Credit Suisse for example estimating the market could reach $50 billion by 2017.

Swatch Group’s Swatch and Tissot brands could be best placed for a partnership in the area, since their ranges are in a similar mass-market price band to the target market for smartwatches, said Jean-Claude Biver, head of the watch unit of luxury goods group LVMH.    

“I’d love to be in the right spot to do smartwatches, but I don’t have access to the technology,” Biver said in an interview. “Also, a watch costing thousands of francs, like a Hublot, cannot afford to become obsolete after a year.” 

But Tissot’s Thiebaud said he was not interested in launching a smartwatch, citing previous tech-oriented gadgets, such as the Tissot High-T and the Swatch Paparazzi — both of which offered limited computer-type functions and were fruits of a collaboration with Microsoft — but which had not met with the hoped-for success. 

Despite Swatch Group’s scepticism on smartwatches, its Swatch brand has just launched a model able to communicate with a smartphone via bluetooth.

For Thiebaud however the key focus remains on the company’s mainstream timepieces.

“At Swatch Group, we like to focus on our core business instead of meandering,” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook on Tuesday announced a $2-billion deal to buy a start-up behind virtual reality headgear that promises to let people truly dive into their friends’ lives.

Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg said that the acquisition of Oculus was a long-term bet that making the social network’s offerings more immersive would pay off.

“People will build a model of a place far away and you will just go see it; it is just like teleporting,” Zuckerberg said.

“I do think gaming is a start,” he said in a conference call, referring to the Oculus headset’s original design focus.

Zuckerberg billed the acquisition as part of a drive to build the “next major computing platform that will come after mobile”.

For now, Facebook will use its resources to make Oculus headgear affordable and ubiquitous, according to Zuckerberg.

The California-based social network does not intend to become a hardware company, but Zuckerberg said it is open to people using virtual reality devices for immersive shopping experiences at Facebook.

Facebook plans to build on Oculus technology for areas such as communications, education and entertainment.

Oculus shareholders will receive $400 million in cash and 23.1 million Facebook shares in the deal.

Facebook called Oculus, launched in 2012, the leader in immersive virtual reality technology with a strong following among developers.

The company has already garnered more than 75,000 orders for the $350 Oculus Rift headset development kits.

“While the applications for virtual reality technology beyond gaming are in their nascent stages, several industries are already experimenting with the technology,” Facebook said.

“Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”

Oculus’s headset earned raves from reviewers at the annual global technology fair CES in Las Vegas in January.

Buying it puts Facebook, the social networking leader, in competition with Oculus rival Sony for development of advanced virtual reality headsets.

I have always been a bookworm; I have no qualms about admitting that. Storybooks fascinate me and the written word captivates me, totally. Being more visual than audio, my personal preference is that I like to read the books myself, rather than have them read out to me. Or even watch them enacted. 

This way I can imagine anything. But the sad thing is nobody has the time or patience for people whose heads are forever (like my sensible mother used to say) in the clouds. Imagination is greatly undervalued these days and not many folks understand how creativity can transform everything. 

When our daughter was little I used to invent games for her whenever she was ill or indisposed. Her favourite one was when I would switch on the TV, tune into some political discussion or dramatic serial, and turn down the volume. The two of us would provide the voiceover. The fun would start in earnest when we would superimpose more and more bizarre dialogues into our protagonists. 

The president of a country, for example, could be reading out a state of the union address in reality, but with our imaginative dubbing he/she would be giving tips on gardening or hair transplant.  If there were a tragic scene going on, we would introduce a comic script into it, or vice versa. 

The entire performance was supposed to be done with deadpan expression but within moments our little patient would dissolve into peels of laughter. And we would have to start from scratch, all over again. 

Inventing different endings to a story, instead of the one in the fairytale, was another game. You know, like if Cinderella’s glass slipper did not fit her, then what?  Or, if the frog prince continued to be a frog even after the princess kissed him, what would happen then? 

The child would come up with hilarious conclusions, where the wicked witches would become the dreaded PE teachers of her school, and the unfortunate princess would discover her hidden talents and go on to write the Harry Potter series. 

With the passage of time, our daughter went away to college for higher studies, and to cope with the empty nest, I started to dabble with the idea of writing a book. I have been a correspondent for more than twenty years, so the thought should have crossed my mind earlier. But somehow, it simply didn’t. 

The moment I voiced my plan, I had people rushing in with their suggestions. Before I could even get my thoughts together, my advisers had lined up imaginary book signing deals for me. I have heard of the cart jumping the horse and all the rest of it, but here it was an entire bandwagon that was hopping, skipping and diving, in front of the proverbial horse. 

The most excited in all this was my immediate family. They not only wanted me to write a book quickly, but they wanted to feature in it too. 

“So have you thought of a name yet?” spouse asked me the other day.

“For what?” I asked. 

“Call your book, ‘Living with a Legend’,” he suggested.

“I am not a legend,” I said, horrified. 

“That would be me, so call it,‘Married to a Legend’,” he specified. 

”You are not a legend,” I muttered, frowning. 

“You can make us into one, call it‘ Mother of a Legend’, mom,” our daughter piped up. 

Mistaken legends? Or, legendary mistakes? Who can tell?

BEIJING – Premature deaths and health problems from air pollution cost China as much as $300 billion a year, an official report said Tuesday, calling for a new urbanisation model for the world’s second-largest economy.

“As China prepares for the next wave of urbanisation, addressing environmental and resource constraints will become increasingly more urgent because much of China’s pollution is concentrated in its cities,” said the joint report by the World Bank and the Development Research Centre of the State Council, China’s cabinet.

High mortality levels and other health problems from China’s notorious air pollution are estimated to cost the country from $100 billion to more than $300 billion a year, said the report, which was 14 months in the making.

Writing in the Lancet in December, former Chinese health minister Chen Zhu cited studies showing air pollution caused up to 500,000 premature deaths a year in China.

Tuesday’s report said the long-term consequences could include birth defects and impaired cognitive functions because young children and infants are severely affected by poor air quality.

China’s rapid urbanisation over the last three decades –– a key part of its economic boom –– has avoided some common ills such as large-scale slums and unemployment, the report said.

“But strains have begun to emerge in the form of rising inequality, environmental degradation, and the quickening depletion of natural resources,” it said.

Much of the new urban land was taken from farmers at prices often no more than 20 per cent of market values, and the amount of available farmland is now close to the minimum level necessary to ensure food security, said the report.

If current trends continue, an additional 34,000 square kilometres (13,100 square miles) –– an area about the size of the Netherlands –– will be needed to accommodate the growth of cities in the next decade, it added.

China needs to reform the way it expands its cities and curb inefficient urban sprawl, which has sometimes produced ghost towns and wasteful property development, the report said.

On current trends, China will spend $5.3 trillion on urbanisation over the next 15 years –– but with more efficient, denser cities the country could save about $1.4 trillion, or 15 per cent of its gross domestic product last year, World Bank managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati told a conference in Beijing on Tuesday.

The report proposed six areas for reform including more efficient land management that better benefits farmers, and adjustments to the “hukou” residence registration system to give migrant workers equal access to basic public services.

It also called on Beijing to step up its law enforcement on pollution.

China’s Premier Li Keqiang vowed to “declare war” on pollution at the country’s annual legislative gathering this month, and announced new measures to add to a raft of others issued over the past year.

NEW YORK – A small US study raises new questions about whether using electronic cigarettes will lead people to quit smoking, adding to the debate over how tightly the products should be regulated.

The study, which looked at the habits of 88 smokers who also used e-cigarettes, was published as a research letter in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday. It found that smokers who also used e-cigarettes were no more likely to quit smoking after a year, compared to smokers who didn’t use the devices.

Outside experts say the small number of respondents, and a lack of data on whether they intentionally used e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking, mean the findings from the Centre for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco can’t take the place of much more rigorous study on the subject.

E-cigarettes were first introduced in China in 2004 and have since grown into a $2 billion industry. The battery-powered devices let users inhale nicotine-infused vapours, which don’t contain the harmful tar and carbon monoxide in tobacco. 

At issue is how strictly US health regulators should control the products. Advocates say e-cigarettes can help smokers quit. Public health experts fear they can serve as a gateway to smoking for the uninitiated, particularly teenagers. Leading US brands include blu by Lorillard Inc. and products from privately held NJOY and Logic Technology.

A previous report from the UK found that people who use e-cigarettes primarily want to replace traditional cigarettes. 

“We did not find a relationship between using an e-cigarette and reducing cigarette consumption,” Rachel Grana, the lead researcher on the new study, told Reuters Health. 

Grana and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco analysed 2011 survey data collected from 949 smokers. Of those, 88 reported using e-cigarettes.

When the researchers looked at those smokers’ responses a year later, they found that the people who reported using e-cigarettes in the 2011 survey were no more likely to quit smoking than the people who didn’t use e-cigarettes.

For those who were still smoking in 2012, using e-cigarettes also didn’t appear to change how many traditional cigarettes people smoked per day.

The researchers note that the small number of participants who reported using e-cigarettes may have limited their ability to detect a link between quitting smoking and using the device.

Dr. Michael Siegel, who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health that the new study had several design flaws, including that the researchers did not know why some of the participants tried e-cigarettes or how long they had used them. Siegel is an expert on community health at Boston University School of Public Health and has studied e-cigarette research.

By comparing people who smoked regular cigarettes and those who smoked e-cigarettes, the researchers are assuming “that the groups are exactly equivalent in terms of their motivations and their levels of addiction to cigarettes”, Siegel said. “You can’t make those assumptions. You’re not dealing with comparable groups.”

In an e-mailed statement, Grana and fellow researchers acknowledged that they did not have information on the participants’ motivations to use e-cigarettes, but said their analysis took into account other factors known to be linked to quitting smoking, such as their stated intention to quit and how many cigarettes they already smoked each day.

“These factors may also reflect motivations to use e-cigarettes, as e-cigarettes are frequently marketed and perceived as cessation aids,” they wrote. “While these factors predicted quitting as expected, we found that e-cigarette use did not predict quitting.

Siegel also pointed out that only about 8 per cent of the people surveyed said they had any intention to quit smoking within the next month. He hopes people will reserve judgement on e-cigarettes until randomised controlled studies — considered the “gold standard” of medical research — are published.

WASHINGTON – Youths who play video games are more likely to think and act in aggressive ways, suggested a study out Monday of more than 3,000 schoolchildren in Singapore.

The research, published in JAMA Paediatrics, a journal of the American Medical Association, was based on more than 3,034 children who were studied over the course of three years.

Frequent use of video games was linked to higher rates of aggressive behaviours and thoughts, according to self-reported answers to survey questions by the children. 

The participants’ average age was 11 at the start of the study, and three quarters of them were boys.

The study also found that answers were similar among boys and girls, and that parental involvement was not likely to change behaviour. 

The researchers said their findings support previous research that has shown a link between video games and aggression.

“This study found that habitual violent video game playing increases long-term aggressive behaviour by producing general changes in aggressive cognition, and this occurs regardless of sex, age, initial aggressiveness or parental involvement,” said the study which was led by researchers at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and the Iowa State University department of psychology.

Participants were asked to respond to six questions about aggressive behaviour, such as, “When someone has angered or provoked me in some way, I have reacted by hitting that person.” Responses were given on a scale of one to four, ranging from “strongly disagree” to strongly agree”. 

Three questions on hostile thoughts were included, such as, “Suppose a boy says something bad to another boy John. Is it wrong for John to hit him?” Answers were also given on a four-point scale, from “really wrong” to “perfectly okay”.

Outside experts questioned the methodology of using self-reported answers rather than measuring behaviour itself, and said the study does not prove that violent video games caused aggressive behaviour in the youths.

AMMAN — When Belgian photographer Asmaa Seba El Mourabiti is talking about Gaza, it is as if she is remembering family and close friends.

Her photos on display at Gallery 14 of fishermen in the coastal enclave, as they fight to make a living under the blockade, reflect the familial bond she has managed to forge with them during her five months there.

“This is Abu Adham,” the photographer said, pointing to a picture of a fisherman posing with a big fish — a rare catch under the circumstances that Gazan fishermen are forced to work. “And this is his son Yahya,” she said, indicating a photo of a young boy dreaming the day away on his father’s boat.

Seba El Mourabiti, who is of Algerian origin, recounted how she met Abu Adham on Gaza’s shore and — after much persuasion — went on to accompany him and his crew on their fishing trips over 30 times.

“They have an amazing relationship with the ocean,” she told The Jordan Times. “They call the sea ‘our mother’.”

But despite their devotion to the sea, many fishermen are thinking of abandoning the profession, according to the photographer, as Israel confines Gazans’ to a six mile (around 9.7km) fishing zone.

“They find nothing there but very small fish and sometimes nothing at all,” Seba El Mourabiti said.

“These people are now thinking of abandoning an ancient tradition that their grandfathers passed on to them.”

The exhibition, entitled “Fishermen of Gaza, a Trade in Danger”, highlights the difficulties facing those few who continue to cling stubbornly to the profession of their ancestors.

Despite everything, they are always smiling, celebrating every catch as a hard-earned victory.

The photos show fishermen young and old flaunting the tiny fish they just caught, with some of them flashing the victory sign.

“To them, going out every day into the sea is not just about catching fish. It is a way to tell the Israelis that this is their ocean,” said Seba El Mourabiti.

Abu Adham’s eldest son is one of those young adamant fishermen.

“He says ‘Even if I only catch one shrimp, to me it’s a victory’”, the photographer recalled, quoting 20-year-old Adham, the captain of his father’s rented boat.

She hopes that her exhibition, as it continues to tour other cities, shows a side of Gaza that is often overlooked.

“I wanted to show Gaza away from all the politics, to show that these are humans suffering under the blockade.”

Several photos show Israeli navy vessels in the background as an ominous reminder of what awaits the fishermen beyond the designated six miles.

“There you can see the Israeli navy ship. The Israelis were addressing the fishermen in Hebrew, so I asked Abu Adham to translate for me,” she said, pointing to one of the photos.

The translation revealed what she described as “horrible threats” to intimidate the Gazans. Yet, the fishermen in the photo are seen going about their business as if nothing is happening.

“They don’t care, although they might be shot at any moment.”

In another photo, Seba El Mourabiti gives a glimpse of the serenity associated with fishing even under occupation.

“I call this ‘Sailing Dream’. When you see the picture you don’t think they are in Gaza or that there’s a blockade.”

The photo depicts a fishing boat in the middle of the sea, with the shore miles away. The sea is calm, two men are fishing and there is not another soul in sight.

But this rare respite cannot change the bleak reality.

“I think in five years there won’t be any fishermen in Gaza,” the photographer said, though refusing to abandon hope, taking a leaf out of the Gazans’ book.

“This is why I love Gaza. They love life and they enjoy it in every moment. They helped me find my humanity. No matter what other work I do, Gaza will always have a place in my heart.”

The exhibition is part of the fourth Image Festival, organised by Institut Français and Darat Al Tasweer. It continues through March 29. 

CALIFORNIA – Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, US researchers said on Wednesday.

The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth’s magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.

“Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous,” Luhmann said in a statement.

A 2013 study estimated that a solar storm like the Carrington Event could take a $2.6 trillion bite out of the current global economy.

Massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields, shot into space on July 23, 2012, would have been aimed directly at Earth if they had happened nine days earlier, Luhmann said.

The bursts from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, carried southward magnetic fields and would have clashed with Earth’s northward field, causing a shift in electrical currents that could have caused electrical transformers to burst into flames, Luhmann said. The fields also would have interfered with global positioning system satellites.

The event, detected by NASA’s STEREO A spacecraft, is the focus of a paper that was released in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday by Luhmann, China’s State Key Laboratory of Space Weather professor Ying Liu and their colleagues.

Although coronal mass injections can happen several times a day during the sun’s most active 11-year cycle, the blasts are usually small or weak compared to the 2012 and 1859 events, she said.

Luhmann said that by studying images captured by the sun-observing spacecraft, scientists can better understand coronal mass injections and predict solar magnetic storms in the future.

“We have the opportunity to really look closely at one of these events in all of its glory and look at why in this instance was so extreme,” Luhmann said.

PARIS – About a million children, double the previous estimate, fall ill with tuberculosis every year, said a study Monday that also gave the first tally of drug-resistant TB among the young.

“Many cases of tuberculosis and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis disease are not being detected in children,” it said.

The team’s computer model, based on population data and previous studies, suggests 999,800 people aged under 15 fell sick with TB in 2010.

Around 40 per cent of the cases were in Southeast Asia and 28 per cent in Africa.

“Our estimate of the total number of new cases of childhood TB is twice that estimated by the WHO (World Health Organisation) in 2011, and three times the number of child TB cases notified globally each year,” said Ted Cohen from the Harvard School of Public Health.

The research, published in The Lancet, coincides with World TB Day, which places the spotlight on a disease that claims some 1.3 million lives each year.

The team estimated that nearly 32,000 children in 2010 had multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), meaning the strain was impervious to frontline drugs isoniazid and rifampin and was thus harder and costlier to treat.

This is the first estimate of MDR-TB among children under 15, who constitute a quarter of the global population.

Children are at a higher risk of disease and death from MDR-TB, but react well to medication. They are harder to diagnose, partly because smaller children cannot cough up sputum samples needed for laboratory tests.

Reliable estimates are necessary for health authorities to assign resources for diagnosing and treating the infectious lung disease.

Commenting on the study, Ben Marais of the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity in Sydney, Australia, described it as the “most rigorous effort to date” to assess TB and MDR-TB incidence in children.

“Every effort should be made to reduce the massive case-detection gap and address the vast unmet need for diagnosis and treatment,” he said.

The WHO says about 450,000 people developed MDR-TB in 2012 and 170,000 died from it. 

Less than 20 per cent of MDR patients received appropriate treatment, which promotes further spread of the disease.

Nearly 10 per cent of MDR cases are thought to be of the even deadlier XDR (extensively drug resistant) variety which does not respond to a yet wider range of drugs.