Newspapers overnight online 01-07-2014 | Pol

Ron Louks took the position of president of devices and emerging solutions, BlackBerry said in a statement on Monday.

It said Louks was joining from OpenNMS Group, where he had served as chief executive officer. He had previously worked as head of strategy for HTC Corp's American unit and as head of technology at Sony Ericsson, a joint venture later bought out by Sony Corp.

The user interface (UI), which features sliding card graphics, is powered by software originally created for Palm smartphones, which the South Korean firm bought from its previous owner HP last year,

LG said more than 70% of its smart TVs released this year would use webOS.

Analysts had complained LG's earlier menu system had been too confusing.

The firm unveiled the new technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where many of its rivals are also showing off new televisions.

Card-based menus The centre-piece of the new UI is Launcher - a scrollable menu that runs across the bottom part of the screen, allowing the owner to switch between content.

Different coloured cards are used to represent on-air programmes; internet-based movies and shows from firms including Netflix and Amazon; apps including Twitter and Skype; and media stored on other devices.

The idea, the company said, was to allow viewers to simultaneously watch a show, play a game or surf the internet while also searching for other content - removing the need to navigate to a home screen.

A second menu bar, Today, can be activated to run horizontally across the central part of the screen providing suggestions for popular shows and other content the software believes is likely to interest the watcher.

LG also highlighted that the software was designed to make it easier to set up the TV. For example, if you plug in a games console it is identified as such, rather than as an HDMI source.

It also suggested it would be relatively easy for developers to create third-party apps for the platform. "One of the big problems TV manufacturers have had has been trying to tailor the available content to each user," said Edward Border, from the consultancy IHS Screen Digest.

"They have struggled to crack how to avoid requiring too many clicks or menus to go through. Previous efforts to simplify things have only resulted in it becoming difficult for owners to find what they wanted."

Early feedback for LG's new approach suggested it was an improvement on its previous design, but not a huge leap forward. "It won't generate massive consumer demand for LG's TVs," wrote Dieter Bohn for the Verge news site, which had an early hands-on with the technology.

Shares in T-Mobile, majority owned by Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), rose 2.5 percent on Monday after the company said it will pay Verizon Wireless $2.365 billion cash and give it $950 million worth of spectrum.

Demand for wireless airwaves has risen sharply as U.S. operators scramble to boost their networks to support increasing consumer Web surfing and video use on cellphones. While the government is planning airwave auctions, spectrum demand may also drive further consolidation involving airwave owners such as Satellite TV provider Dish Network (DISH.O).

T-Mobile, the No. 4 U.S. mobile provider, has been using discounts to compete with bigger rivals, but it badly needs more airwaves after falling behind bigger rivals AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Wireless in developing high-speed data services.

T-Mobile, which may itself be an acquisition target of Dish or Sprint Corp (S.N), also said on Monday that it hopes to buy additional spectrum in government auctions at the end of 2014 and in 2015.

"It's still a priority to get additional spectrum," Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray told analysts on a conference call to discuss the deal.

While they said the spectrum was crucial for T-Mobile US, some analysts noted that the price was steep at a 26 percent premium over what Verizon had paid for it at an auction several years ago.

Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said the deal was "very much not a fire sale" for Verizon. She noted that it would be an important boost to T-Mobile's network, but said the buyer may have to pay another $1 billion to put the spectrum to use.

T-Mobile raised $3.8 billion in stock and bond sales in November to fund spectrum purchases. Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said he would look to debt markets rather than equity markets for any future spectrum funding needs.

The company will be able to use the additional airwaves to help it steal customers from rivals such as AT&T, Pacific Crest analyst Michael Bowen said.

"T-Mobile will now have greater spectrum with which to compete against all carriers, but we anticipate that AT&T will continue to suffer the largest impact," Bowen said.

In a sign of rising competitive tensions between the two companies, which use the same network technology, AT&T on Friday offered T-Mobile customers a $200 credit to switch to its service.

The third generation of the Xbox is competing head-to-head with Sony Corp's PlayStation 4, also launched in November. Sony said it had sold 2.1 million PS4s by the first week of December.

It will not be clear which company is leading the console battle until Sony updates that figure.

The sales of the new Xbox are in line with expectations, said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, who also estimates PlayStation sales around the 3 million mark.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Sunday there might be ways Iran could "contribute from the sidelines" in a so-called Geneva 2 peace conference in Switzerland on January 22, and on Monday U.S. officials said Tehran might still be able to play a helpful role.

While there has been a warming in U.S.-Iranian ties this year including a November 24 deal to curb the Iranian nuclear program, there are no visible signs that this has led to greater improvement in other areas such as Syria, where they are on opposite sides of the civil war.

Kerry reiterated U.S. opposition to Iran being a formal member of the peace talks because it does not support a 2012 international agreement on Syria.

That "Geneva 1" accord called for the Syrian government and opposition to form a transitional government "by mutual consent", a phrase Washington says rules out any role for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia, a sponsor of the plan, disputes that view.

On Monday, U.S. officials said Iran could improve its chances of playing a role on the sidelines of the Syria peace talks by working with Damascus to stop the bombardment of civilians and improve humanitarian access.

"There are ... steps that Iran could take to show the international community that they are serious about playing a positive role," one of the officials said in Brussels.

"Those include calling for an end to the bombardment by the Syrian regime of their own people. It includes calling for and encouraging humanitarian access."

Another official made clear that the comment on bombardment referred to Syria's biggest city, Aleppo, where dozens have been killed in raids in which the Syrian air force has used improvised barrel bombs.

NO INDICATION

Iran had however given no indication it was ready to take any of these steps, a U.S. official said, and noted there was opposition to Tehran's participation from other nations. The official did not identify these, but they are likely to include Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional rival.

The State Council's guidelines call for tighter regulation of banks' off-balance-sheet lending and say that trust companies - the biggest non-bank players in what's called "shadow banking" - should return to their original purpose as asset managers and not engage in "credit-type" business.

A copy of the council's Document 107, dated December 11, was obtained by Reuters. There's been no official confirmation of the document, which was addressed to government agencies at the central and local level.

An index of the biggest mainland stocks .CSI300 closed at its lowest level in five months on Monday, as concerns about the new regulations weighed down the market. .SS

China's policymakers are concerned that the country's economy has become overly reliant on borrowing to fuel growth and that debt-fueled investment has created massive overcapacity in many industries.

If strictly implemented, the deleveraging push could put China's economy on a more sustainable long-term path by reducing the risk of a bad-debt crisis. But short-term growth would likely fall as a reduction in credit growth spurs a fall in spending.

"One can predict that growth of total social financing will slow and fixed-asset investment will also slow," said Liu Yuhui, director of the financial focal point laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, referring to the central bank's measure of total credit from all sources.

"If this isn't accompanied by various forms of debt restructuring, some sectors may see their funding chains broken and there could be defaults," he said.

An official audit released last week showed that China's local government debt reached 17.9 trillion yuan at end-June 2013, or up from 10.7 trillion at end-2010. [ID:nL3N0KA034] Local governments are among the largest recipients of shadow bank loans.

China's ratio of total debt-to-GDP, including government, corporate and household debt, was set to reach 218 percent of GDP by the end of 2013, up 87 percentage points since 2008, rating agency Fitch estimates.

Merkel, 59, is using crutches after her accident in Switzerland over the Christmas holidays and will have to take it easy for the next three weeks, her spokesman said on Monday.

The news about Merkel - who began her third term last month after sealing the "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats - came a week after German ex-Formula One champion Michael Schumacher suffered a far more serious downhill skiing accident and remains in critical condition in France.

Merkel's accident had occurred "at low speed" but what had at first seemed to be heavy bruising turned out to be a partial fracture, said spokesman Steffen Seibert. "The chancellor is of course able to work and is in full communication," he added.

The conservative chancellor, a keen hiker who prefers cross-country to downhill skiing, must lie down and work from home where possible.

She has postponed a visit to Warsaw scheduled for Wednesday and a meeting in Berlin with Luxembourg's new prime minister, Xavier Bettel. But Seibert said she will lead her first cabinet meeting of 2014 on Wednesday.

Her government has got off to a rocky start. The right and left have clashed over how quickly to implement policies from their coalition deal, including a minimum wage, a highway toll and a data protection law.

Merkel's Bavarian allies also provoked a row by proposing limits to welfare payments for immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, who from this year have full access to the job markets and social services of the rest of the European Union.

CRITICISM OF MERKEL

Merkel has also drawn criticism for the planned switch of her recently departed chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, to a high-paying position as a political lobbyist for state-owned railway operator Deutsche Bahn.

News of Pofalla's move, which has not yet been finalized, came just two months after prosecutors opened an investigation into another top Merkel aide, Eckart von Klaeden, over his move to the top lobby job at German carmaker Daimler.

Opposition parties and anti-lobby groups have denounced both moves as evidence of a "revolving door" between politics and business in Germany.

Supervolcanoes are capable of eruptions thousands of times larger than normal outpourings.

It was thought that an external trigger, such as an earthquake, was needed to bring about a giant blast.

But tests at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble show the sheer volume of liquid magma is enough to cause a catastrophic super-eruption.

Details of the research by a Swiss team appear in Nature Geoscience. .

Simulating the intense heat and pressure inside these "sleeping giants" could help predict a future disaster.

Lead author Wim Malfait, of ETH Zurich, said: "We knew the clock was ticking but we didn't know how fast: what would it take to trigger a super-eruption? "Now we know you don't need any extra factor - a supervolcano can erupt due to its enormous size alone.

"Once you get enough melt, you can start an eruption just like that."

There are about 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth - including Lake Toba in Indonesia, Lake Taupo in New Zealand, and the somewhat smaller Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy.

Super-eruptions occur rarely - only once every 100,000 years on average. But when they do occur, they have a devastating impact on Earth's climate and ecology.

When a supervolcano erupted 600,000 years ago in Wyoming, in what today is Yellowstone National Park, it ejected more than 1,000 cubic km of ash and lava into the atmosphere - enough to bury a large city to a depth of a few kilometres.

This ejection was 100 times bigger than Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1992 and dwarfs even historic eruptions like Krakatoa (1883).

"This is something that, as a species, we will eventually have to deal with. It will happen in future," said Dr Malfait.

"You could compare it to an asteroid impact - the risk at any given time is small, but when it happens the consequences will be catastrophic."

Being able to predict such a catastrophe is obviously critical. But the trigger has remained elusive - because the process is different from conventional volcanoes like Pinatubo and Mt St Helens.

One possible mechanism was thought to be the overpressure in the magma chamber generated by differences between the less dense molten magma and more dense rock surrounding it.

The company reported net profit of T$0.3 billion ($10 million), compared to a net loss of T$2.97 billion ($99.9 million) in the previous quarter and profit of T$1.01 billion ($34 million) in the same quarter of 2012.

The figure lags expected net profit of T$721.71 million ($24.3 million), according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The number highlights how quickly problems have piled up at a company that just over two years ago supplied one in every 10 smartphones sold around the world.

The company, which has lost nearly three-quarter of its market value in the last two years, is now worth about $4 billion, dwarfed by rivals like Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

New management installed in the last quarter to tackle that slide must persuade customers the brand can still stand for stylish, feature-loaded phones, while keeping a lid on development costs.

Despite its latest flagship product, the HTC One, garnering rave reviews, the company's global share of the smartphone market has declined to a mere 2.2 percent in the third quarter of 2013 from a peak of 10.3 percent in the third quarter of 2011, data from research firm Gartner show.

While the company's recent "Here's To Change" campaign has seen an advertising revamp featuring "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr., analysts remain skeptical about the firm's ability to differentiate its brand image in a highly-saturated playing field.

The company has embarked on a cost-cutting campaign that includes buying its chips from cheaper vendors and outsourcing production. It also sold its stake in headphone brand Beats Electronics LLC, booking a one-time pre-tax profit of T$2.5 billion ($85 million), which would be recorded in the fourth quarter.

That was three years before this tune was actually written, but McFly knows it well because he's from the future.

It would stand to reason that in real life, time travelers from a future era -- or who had at least visited the future -- might give themselves away by mentioning events that haven't yet occurred. They might even do so online. I mean, you'd obviously take to social media to broadcast your foreknowledge of world events, right?

Scientists at Michigan Technological University wanted to see if they could catch any such slips by residents of the future. So Robert Nemiroff, professor of physics, and graduate student Teresa Wilson conducted a whimsical study in hopes of identifying accurate predictions of future events. They are presenting their study at the American Astronomical Society Meeting on Monday.

The online platform that allowed them to look most comprehensively for prescient posts was Twitter, because the social network doesn't allow back-dating. Facebook users can alter timestamps on posts, and the popular search engines Google and Bing were not as helpful as Twitter in looking for "prescient information," the authors found.

Study authors focused on two major search terms they believe will have lasting significance for years to come: Comet ISON and Pope Francis. They looked for mentions of these from January 2006 to September 2013.

Before the identification of comet ISON in 2012, there were no mentions that the researchers could find of this icy space rock. Similarly, before Jorge Bergoglio took on his papal name in 2013, the phrase "Pope Francis" did not appear in the researchers' search results, except for one person's blog, which appears to have been speculating -- not remembering something from the future.

It appears that no one posted about his or her neighbor or acquaintance declaring the name Pope Francis early, either.

"It's not proof, but it's an indication to me that it's not possible," Nemiroff said, referring to time travel. There are, of course, several reasons why this technique might not detect any time travelers. Nemiroff and Wilson may have missed them by using the wrong search terms. Temporal adventurers might avoid posting to social media altogether, or even using the Internet, for fear of being found out.

The Polar Star is responding to a request for assistance from Australian authorities as well as from the Russian and Chinese governments, the Coast Guard statement said.

"The U.S. Coast Guard stands ready to respond to Australia's request," Coast Guard Pacific Area Commander Vice Admiral Paul Zukunft said. "Our highest priority is safety of life at sea, which is why we are assisting in breaking a navigational path for both of these vessels."

Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Allyson Conroy said the Polar Star was expected to arrive on the scene on January 12 and take two to three days to complete its mission.

"You're looking at the Antarctic, which is a challenge in itself. You have weather and you have ice," Conroy said in a phone interview. "But our crews are very well trained and we expect to be successful in this mission."

A Chinese icebreaker that helped rescue 52 passengers from a Russian ship stranded in Antarctic ice found itself stuck in heavy ice on Friday.

A helicopter from the Snow Dragon ferried the passengers from the stranded Russian ship to an Australian icebreaker late on Thursday. The Chinese vessel now had concerns about its own ability to move through heavy ice, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

The Russian-owned research ship, Akademik Shokalskiy, left New Zealand on November 28 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of an Antarctic journey led by Australian explorer Douglas Mawson.

It became trapped on December 24, 100 nautical miles east of French Antarctic station Dumont d'Urville and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Tasmania.

During their time on the ice, passengers amused themselves with movies, classes in knot tying, languages, yoga and photography, and rang in the New Year with dinner, drinks and a song their adventure.

The Coast Guard's Polar Star is 399 feet long with a maximum speed of 18 knots. It can continuously break 6 feet of ice at three knots, and can break 21 feet of ice backing and ramming, the Coast Guard said.

The activists include siblings Alaa Abdel Fattah and Mona Seif, leading figures in the protest movement that triggered the 2011 uprising against autocrat Hosni Mubarak but is now facing a widening crackdown by the army-backed authorities.

Sunday's verdict related to an attack on Shafik's campaign headquarters ahead of the presidential run-off against the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi in the 2012 election.

The Cairo court convicted them of "displaying force" and setting fire to the building during the attack, charges they had denied.

"The ruling was political," Mona Seif told Reuters TV after the verdict was announced. She said there was no evidence or witnesses to back up the ruling against the dozen defendants.

The case was brought earlier this year by a public prosecutor appointed by Mursi in what activists said at the time was an attempt by his administration to intimidate the pro-democracy movement.

Since the military overthrew Mursi in July, the army-backed authorities have launched a fierce crackdown on dissent that has mostly targeted Mursi's Islamist supporters but has recently widened to include members of the secular activist movement.

Alaa Abdel Fattah faces trial in a separate case on charges of breaking a new law that makes it a crime to protest without police permission. He has been in custody since November 28.

The government escalated its efforts to suppress Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood last month by declaring it a terrorist organization, giving the authorities even wider scope to jail its supporters.