"... It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."....I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Ham is currently on exhibit at the Global Sources spring electronics show at AsiaWorld Expo - the largest event of its kind in the world, with more than 4,000 booths displaying the latest gadgets.
The head is created with malleable material called Frubber using soft-bodied mechanical engineering and nanotechnology.
It contains realistic pores that measure just 4 to 40 nanometers across (there are 10million nanometers in one centimetre).
The average annual salary of the U.S.’s top 10 superrich was $48.8 million, while the average annual salary of top 10 Korean superrich was $7.2 million. On average, U.S. superrich earned roughly seven times more than their Korean counterparts.
The U.S. superrich with the highest annual salary is David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications, who earns about $156 million per year.
His annual salary is over twice that of Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, who earns $67 million.
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was recorded as earning an annual salary of $44 million, and Marillyn Hewson, CEO of defense firm Lockheed Martin, is the only female superrich on the list with an annual salary of $34 million.
In the case of South Korea, the superrich with the highest annual salary is Hyundai Motor Group chairman Chung Mong-koo, who receives an annual salary of $19 million (21.5 billion won) from Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Steel and Hyundai Mobis.
Samsung Electronics CEO Shin Jong-kyun earns $13 million, the highest among all professional managers in South Korea after Chung. Following Shin was Samsung Electronics vice chairman Kwon Oh-hyun with $8.6 million, Samsung Electronics president and CEO Yoon Boo-keun with $5 million and Samsung Electronics president and CFO Lee Sang-hoon with $3.5 million.
AmorePacific chairman Suh Kyung-bae was reported to receive an annual salary of $4.09 million, and LG Group chairman Koo Bon-moo receives $4.07 million annually.
Although the Korean and U.S. superrich show a huge difference in terms of their salary, a closer look showed that their basic salaries were similar.
The average base pay of Korean superrich was $2.38 million, which is only slightly more than the base pay of U.S. board members, which is $2.31 million. So what determines the difference in total compensation?
High ratio of incentives in U.S.
The proportion of the base pay to total compensation was the key difference between the superrich in Korea and the United States.
For Korean superrich the average ratio was 33 percent, but it was only 4.7 percent on average for the U.S. superrich.
Instead, U.S. superrich were usually found to receive bonuses (over 10 times that of the base pay) or stock options as incentives.
In the case of Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger, his base pay was $2.5 million, but he received $46 million in total in 2014 after incentives, thanks to the massive success of Disney’s feature film “Frozen.”
CVS CEO Larry Merlo’s total salary in 2014 was $32 million, but his base pay is only $350,000. Instead, Merlo received the rest of the pay as incentives as CVS reaped a profit of nearly $9.2 billion last year.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who famously earns a base pay of $1, received $67 million last year from stock options and bonuses since the company took in a $14.7 billion in profit.
Meanwhile, there are also businessmen who failed to receive their expected salary for not reaching their profit goals.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav was to receive $156 million under the condition of receiving $147 million as stocks across six years. However, in 2014, he took home a base pay of $3 million and a bonus of $6.08 million for failing to achieve his profit goals, showing the U.S.’s performance-based corporate culture where the CEO can be denied a part of his pay for lackluster performance.
Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone costs more to produce than Apple's top-range iPhone 6 Plus.
According to analysis by research firm HIS on Wedneday, the 64 GB version of the Galaxy S6 Edge for use on Verizon networks costs US$290.45 to build, including $284.85 for parts and $5.60 for assembly, and the retail price is $799.99.
IHS said the Galaxy S6 Edge is the most expensive to make of Samsung's Galaxy S series.
In contrast, the iPhone 6 Plus costs $240.05 to build -- $236.04 for parts and $4.01 for assembly -- but it sells for $849.99, so Apple as usual makes a much fatter profit per phone.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2015/04/16/2015041601429.html
Samsung has removed its corporate logo from its new smartphones sold in Japan, a company spokeswoman confirmed on Saturday.
The name Samsung is missing on both the Galaxy S6 and its curved-edge variant, the Galaxy S6 Edge.
These models are presented as Docomo Galaxy and au Galaxy, carrying the names of its associated Japanese telecom service providers.
Samsung provided no reason why it kept the logo off in Japan.
A leading smartphone maker globally, Samsung has however been struggling in the Japanese market, where archrival Apple is dominant, followed by key Japanese makers such as Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/samsung-removes-logo-on-smartphones-in-japan
Japan’s government said Wednesday that the number of scrambles by the country’s warplanes has surged in recent years to levels nearly matching the Cold War era amid growing activity by China and Russia in the region.
The Self Air-Defense Force scrambled its jets 943 times during the 12-month period through March 31, just one short of the record set in 1984, the Defense Ministry said. The scrambles were dominated by those against Chinese and Russian aircraft.
The ministry reported 133 more scrambles than the previous year, underscoring growing tension in the region.
Asteroid 2012 TC4 is set to whizz dangerously close to our planet for the second time after the space rock narrowly missed Earth in October 2012.
Astronomers estimate 2012 TC4 could be as large as 40m wide - just under the height of New York's famous Statue of Liberty from her feet to the tip of the torch.
This is twice the size of the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, which injured 1,500 people and damaged more than 7,000 buildings.
The impact of the larger 2012 TC4 asteroid, predicted to near Earth on October 12 2017, could be even more devastating.
And, worryingly, experts cannot yet predict where in the world it will strike.
Dr Judit Györgyey-Ries, astronomer at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, told space blog astrowatch.net: "We could see an airburst maybe broken windows, depending on where it hits."
The giant asteroid was discovered on October 4, 2012 by a Hawaiian observatory and a week later narrowly missed Earth when it passed 94,800km away.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/570239/Asteroid-collision-course-earth
Pelosi: Obamacare, Equal Pay, Amnesty Promote 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’
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WATCH THE VIDEO http://cnsnews.com/video/cnsnews/pelosi-obamacare-equals-life-liberty-and-pursuit-happiness-amnesty-honors-values-our
ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector.
The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm.
During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.
Law enforcement and intelligence sources report the area around Anapra is dominated by the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Cartel (“Juárez Cartel”), La LÃnea (the enforcement arm of the cartel) and the Barrio Azteca (a gang originally formed in the jails of El Paso). Cartel control of the Anapra area make it an extremely dangerous and hostile operating environment for Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.
According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling – and working for Juárez Cartel – help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed “coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing.
A CBS4 investigation has learned that two Transportation Security Administration screeners at Denver International Airport have been fired after they were discovered manipulating passenger screening systems to allow a male TSA employee to fondle the genital areas of attractive male passengers.
It happened roughly a dozen times, according to information gathered by CBS4.
According to law enforcement reports obtained during the CBS4 investigation, a male TSA screener told a female colleague in 2014 that he “gropes” male passengers who come through the screening area at DIA.
“He related that when a male he finds attractive comes to be screened by the scanning machine he will alert another TSA screener to indicate to the scanning computer that the party being screened is a female. When the screener does this, the scanning machine will indicate an anomaly in the genital area and this allows (the male TSA screener) to conduct a pat-down search of that area.”
Russia paved the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran.
The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West.
A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal.
Sources told Reuters more than a year ago that a deal worth up to $20 billion was being discussed and would involve Russia buying up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day.
Officials from the two countries have issued contradictory statements since then on whether a deal has been signed, but Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday one was already being implemented.
"I wanted to draw your attention to the rolling out of the oil-for-goods deal, which is on a very significant scale," Ryabkov told a briefing with members of the upper house of parliament on the talks with Iran.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/us-iran-nuclear-russia-idUSKBN0N40YX20150413
The creation of the prosaic-sounding Asian Infrastructure Investment Development Bank (AIIB) has landed the biggest blow to America’s superpower status in the post-war era.
Such is the verdict of former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, one of the West's foremost public intellectuals and a man whose voice reverberates around the corridors of the world’s chancellories.
Mr Summers has hailed the birth of the China-led institution as the moment the US lost its role as “the underwriter of the global economic system”.
“I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it,” opined the former president of Harvard and one time candidate to take over the US Federal Reserve.
He is only the latest in a chorus of former Washington insiders who are heralding the Communist nation's attempts to rival US hegemony in the “soft power” stakes.
The brain-child of Chinese premier Xi Jinping, the AIIB aims to plug chronic infrastructure gaps across Asia. With 46-founding members as it stands, the lender has been dubbed the “World Bank for Asia”, closely mimicking rival organisations such as the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank.
Principally, the bank would act as a funnel for pumping China's massive foreign exchange reserves into projects to build roads, bridges and mobile phone towers everywhere from Myanmar to Iran.
Beijing has already committed to providing at least $50bn of the $100bn capital needed to jump start the initiative.
Critics however, argue the AIIB is simply a ruse for Beijing to expand its strategic presence in the developing world.
China retorts that the international lender will bolster the financial firepower needed to address a $700bn shortfall in infrastructure investment which existing institutions cannot meet and which will provide a collective economic benefit to the world.
As bodies littered the streets and the sick lay dying in front of overwhelmed clinics last year, President Obama ordered the largest American intervention ever in a global health crisis, hoping to stem the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.
But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and deploying nearly 3,000 troops to build Ebola treatment centers, the United States ended up creating facilities that have largely sat empty: Only 28 Ebola patients have been treated at the 11 treatment units built by the United States military, American officials now say.
Nine centers have never had a single Ebola patient.
“My task was to convince the international organizations, ‘You don’t need any more E.T.U.s,’ ” said Dr. Hans Rosling, a Swedish public health expert who advised Liberia’s health ministry, referring to Ebola treatment units.
“I warned them, ‘The only thing you’ll show is an empty E.T.U.,’ ” he added. “ ‘Don’t do it.’ ”
The American response, it turns out, was outpaced by the fast-moving and unpredictable disease.
Facing criticism that his reaction to the devastating epidemic had been slow and inadequate, Mr. Obama announced his signature plan in mid-September, focusing on Liberia, America’s historical ally.
But even before the first treatment center built by the American military opened there, the number of Ebola cases in Liberia had fallen drastically, casting doubt on the American strategy of building facilities that took months to complete.
The emphasis on constructing treatment centers — so widely championed last year — ended up having much less impact than the inexpensive, nimble measures taken by residents to halt the outbreak, many officials say.
Liberia could be declared free of Ebola as early as next month. But with health officials warning that it is only a matter of time before another outbreak erupts in this region, they are drawing important lessons from the successes and shortcomings of the response by international and West African leaders.
The boss of Nissan wants to put self-driving cars on Japan’s roads next year, and says they will be able to navigate busy urban environments on their own by 2020.
Carlos Ghosn, chief executive, said formidable technological and legal challenges remain but that the direction of travel was plain.
“There will be a Nissan product in Japan, which will carry autonomous drive,” he told reporters on Thursday at the New York International Auto Show. “Obviously when you have this kind of technology, you want also the Japanese market to enjoy it as soon as possible.”
A five-year tie up with NASA on the technology would see the initial roll out by December 2016, with cars that can drive on highways without anyone at the wheel.
In 2018, models should have the ability to avoid hazards and to change lanes, and by 2020, vehicles should be able to autonomously maneuver through crowded city roads.
“It’s going to happen step by step, because we need to make sure that the regulators in the different countries feel comfortable,” Ghosn said, according to Kyodo News.
“To persuade the regulators that you can take your hands off the wheel or your eyes from the road is going to take a lot of demonstration.”
Nissan, Japan’s second biggest automaker, is also looking at working with domestic rivals Toyota and Honda on the technology.
Hillary Clinton will become the quintessential online presidential campaign candidate today when she throws her hat in the ring via an online YouTube.
While chattering classes are caught up in President Barack Obama’s statement that he thinks Hillary Rodham Clinton would be “an excellent president”, his added thought that she “will have a strong message to deliver” if she does decide to run, will go without much notice.
Clinton’s long-anticipated second run for president will be managed by Google, the world’s largest search engine, which has nominated itself as the Grand Central of Truth-Telling.
It’s a PR exercise about to be foisted upon a largely unsuspecting public.
Google, which is in a prime position to do so, will suppress all news that could keep Clinton from making it to the Oval Office. Reminders of her shameful role in the Benghazi scandal will be buried. The personal email accounts from which she operated will be hidden from public view and exist only in distant memory.
A group of armed gunmen attacked the South Korean embassy in Tripoli on Sunday, killing two Libyan guards and injuring another officer, Foreign Ministry officials said.
The incident took place at around 1:20 a.m. Libyan time when the assailants fired some 40 shots from a machine gun as they drove by the embassy, an official said.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility about two hours later on Twitter, saying it had “removed” two guards at the facility.
The three officers who were affiliated with Libya’s Interior Ministry were sent to a nearby hospital by local residents, but two later died.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150412000348
The Obama-Castro meeting was the climax of their surprise announcement on December 17 that, after 18 months of secret negotiations, they would seek to normalize relations between their two nations.
"This is obviously a historic meeting," said Obama, who spoke first after they sat down in polished, wooden chairs for their talks in a blue-carpeted room on the sidelines of the 35-nation Summit of the Americas.
Obama declared that, after 50 years of U.S. policies that had not worked, "it was time for us to try something new."
"We are now in a position to move on a path toward the future," he said, adding that the immediate task was to reopen embassies that shuttered after the 1961 diplomatic break.
Castro cracked a smile when Obama acknowledged that the two sides will continue to have differences on human rights and other issues.
After Obama spoke, the two men stood up and shook hands.
Saying he agreed with everything Obama stated, Castro said the two government can still have differences but "with respect of the ideas of the others."
