Newspapers Online.. 07-16-2013 | Politics S

The US space agency said that the injector component could be made more quickly and cheaply using the technique.

The part is used to deliver liquid oxygen and hydrogen gas to an engine's combustion chamber.

The news follows General Electric's revelation that it planned to use 3D printing technology to make fuel nozzles for its jet engines.

Nasa said that California-based Aerojet Rocketdyne had made the injector using a method called selective laser melting (SLM).

The technique involves turning a computer-designed object into a real-world part by controlling a high-powered laser beam which melts and fuses thin layers of metallic powders into the preordained shape.

The test part was smaller than would be used in a full-size rocket, but large enough to test it could withstand the heat and pressure involved.

Nasa said the component would normally have taken a year to make because of the exact measurements involved, but by using SLM the manufacturing time was cut to less than four months and the price reduced by more than 70%.

"Nasa recognises that on Earth and potentially in space, additive manufacturing can be game-changing for new mission opportunities, significantly reducing production time and cost by 'printing' tools, engine parts or even entire spacecraft," said Michael Gazarik, Nasa's associate administrator for space technology.

SLM is not the only unusual manufacturing technique being explored by Nasa.

The agency has also asked researchers at Washington State University to see whether it would be possible to 3D-print objects out of powder made from lunar rocks.

It is also testing a process called electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) which uses a computer-controlled electron beam gun placed in a vacuum that welds metal wires into complex shapes and patterns.

It has suggested the process could be used by astronauts to make spare parts in space.

Design competition

Nasa's announcement comes a month after General Electric announced a competition for third-parties to create the best 3D-printable design for an aircraft engine bracket - the part used to support the engine when it needs to be serviced. The firm will divide a $20,000 (£13,300) cash prize pool between the eight best performing designs after they are built and tested between August and November.

The US company has already used SLM to produce parts for its upcoming Leap (Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion) family of turbofan engines, made in conjunction with France's Snecma.

His replacement will be Scott Beaumont, who currently runs the company's partnerships business in Europe.

Google's share of the search engine market in China has been slipping, spurred by its decision to no longer censor its searches on the mainland and move its servers to Hong Kong in March 2010, just months after Liu took over.

Google held 8 percent of market in terms of page views in June 2011, coming second to Baidu with 81 percent, according to Chinese data firm CNZZ. Its share has fallen 6 percentage points over two years according to last month's data, dropping to fifth place. New entrant Qihoo 360 already holds 15 percent of market share.

"Once they made the decision to move their servers out of mainland China their prospects here dimmed considerably," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a China technology research firm.

Google's Android operating system has also proven difficult to monetize, despite its success in terms of take-up in China.

For the three months ending in April this year 69 percent of all smartphones sales were on the Android system. Phones using Apple's iOS, Android's closest competitor, made up 25 percent of sales in the same period, according to data from Kantar, a market research group.

The ways the company usually monetizes Android, like its app store, often get stripped out of the software in China when it is remade for the local market, said Natkin.

The prevalence of Android in China drew the ire of its political system in a March report by the state-controlled think tank China Academy of Telecommunications Research, which operates under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The report said that Google had too much control over China's smartphone sector, which had become dependent on Android, and had discriminated against certain local firms.

The paper suggested that the government would throw its full support behind a viable domestic challenger to Google.

"Google's biggest challenge remains how to penetrate China," said Elinor Leung, Hong Kong-based head of Asia telecom and internet research at CLSA.

The 23-year-old's brother has given an interview saying that her family believes she received a shock when trying to answer a call on the handset.

News agency Xinhua has confirmed police are investigating the death of Ma Ailun in the north-western city of Xinjiang.

But it said they had not verified if a mobile phone was the cause.

Ms Ma's older sister posted a message on the micro-blogging service Sina Weibo following her death on Thursday.

"[I] hope that Apple Inc can give us an explanation. I also hope that all of you will refrain from using your mobile devices while charging," it read.

Xinhua said the message had been reposted more than 3,000 times.

"We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family," Apple said in a statement.

"We will fully investigate and co-operate with authorities in this matter."

Safety advice

According to local reports Ms Ma had been a flight attendant with China Southern Airlines and had been planning to get married in August.

Her sister said she had bought the iPhone 5 shortly after it launched in the country in December and had been using it with the original charger at the time of the incident.

Xinhua said the China Consumers Associations had previously reported a man had been killed in 2010 while making a phone call using a handset connected to the mains with an unauthorised charger.

However, one UK-based expert said that under normal circumstances mobile phone owners had no reason to be concerned.

"Using a handset while it's recharging should be completely safe," Prof Will Stewart, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, told the BBC.

"The charger output is low voltage - it's about five volts - much too unpowerful to be dangerous, therefore there should be no risk at all.

"Having said that, something in the charger could have had a fault on it and/or the mains wiring it was connected to might have been faulty.

"Owners should also avoid using mains-connected equipment whilst in the bath or if they are extremely wet, because water could run down the wire and into the plug."

Reid, the top Democrat in the Congress, threatened to invoke a procedural power play known as the "nuclear option" to change the Senate rules so that a filibuster in the 100-member chamber could be ended with a simple majority vote rather than the current requirement of 60 votes.

The Nevada Democrat said he would seek to change the filibuster rules only on executive-branch posts, not on judicial nominees or legislation.

All 100 senators are due to meet privately on Monday at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) to discuss their differences and possibly find a way to avert an unprecedented Senate rule change that would dramatically alter how the chamber operates.

The Democrats control the Senate, 54-46.

"The Senate is broken and needs to be fixed," Reid said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group.

Democrats have accused Republicans of recklessly using the filibuster to block qualified Obama nominees for a variety of job, contributing to political gridlock in Washington.

Reid said he would go to Monday's meeting, but would not compromise on his demand that all seven nominees - some of whom have waited for a Senate vote for more than a year - be confirmed. He added that the 54-member Senate Democratic Caucus supports his position.

Senate votes are to begin on Tuesday on the seven nominees.

They are: Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Richard Griffin, Sharon Block and Mark Pearce to be members of the National Labor Relations Board; Fred Hochberg to be president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank; Thomas Perez to be labor secretary, and Gina McCarthy to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Current Senate rules state that 67 votes are needed to change its rules, including ones on the filibuster. But Democrats could do it with 51 votes by rewriting the rule book with a procedural power play known as the "nuclear option."

Once Democrats switch the threshold on rule changes, they would then reduce to 51 from 60 the number of votes needed to end filibusters on executive-branch nominees.

A LONG HISTORY OF FILIBUSTERS

Filibusters have long been part of the Senate's basic fabric, providing the chamber's minority leverage to extend debate and force the majority to compromise.

The political pressure mounted on Rajoy as the former treasurer of his center-right People's Party gave new testimony before a judge looking into the affair, saying he had made 90,000 euros in cash payments to Rajoy and party secretary-general Maria Dolores Cospedal in 2009 and 2010.

Rajoy had so far managed to limit the impact of the scandal, which involves alleged illegal donations by construction magnates that were supposedly distributed as cash payments to party leaders in return for juicy contracts.

"I will defend political stability and I will fulfill the mandate given to me by Spanish voters," he told a news conference.

Rajoy, whose party has comfortable control of parliament, said the scandal would not derail his political reform program, aimed at combating a deep recession and a huge hole in the budget.

Spain's fiscal woes last year threatened to push it into seeking a bailout and for months the future of the common currency looked at risk as the euro zone's fourth biggest economy teetered.

Rajoy resisted pressure to solicit aid and is now hopeful of an economic turnaround, but his public image has been damaged by the Barcenas scandal.

The opposition on Monday demanded that he quit on Monday, and some members of his own party also said it was time for him to step aside.

"The PP may have an absolute majority but it has lost moral authority," said the opposition Socialists' deputy secretary general, Elena Valenciano. "We are going to work with all the parties to make the prime minister step down."

EX-TREASURER QUESTIONED

At the heart of the scandal is former party treasurer Luis Barcenas, 55, who was arrested in June and charged with bribery, money laundering, tax fraud and other crimes.

High Court Judge Pablo Ruz questioned Barcenas behind closed doors for almost five hours on Monday after he was transported from jail in a white and black van.

Barcenas, once a trusted aide, turned over documents showing how he ran a secret slush fund at the party for many years, and provided details of years of cash payouts to party leaders, according to a source with access to the court proceedings.

Over his more than 20 years handling PP finances, Barcenas accumulated as much as 48 million euros in Swiss bank accounts that prosecutors say he has failed to adequately explain.

After meeting the interim head of state and the prime minister, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns insisted he was not in town "to lecture anyone". But many on either side of Egypt's divide suspect Washington of plotting against them.

A huge crowd of supporters of Islamist Mohamed Mursi poured into a square near a mosque in northeast Cairo carrying a giant Egyptian flag, banners and portraits of the detained leader.

Accusing the United States of backing a military coup, thousands of Mursi's partisans have kept a vigil there since the days before the army toppled him on July 3, swelling to tens of thousands for mass protests every few days.

Monday's was one of the biggest of the past week, with the crowd growing at nightfall after the end of the Ramadan fast.

Apart from the main protest at the mosque, thousands of Mursi supporters set up a tented camp outside Cairo University.

As the sun set, a teenage girl with a green headscarf took to a stage there, reading a poem and reciting from the Koran. Boys played soccer and fathers bounced toddlers on their shoulders. They chanted a call-and-response with a cleric asking God to strike down the armed forces chief who unseated Mursi.

The army warned demonstrators on Monday that it would respond with "the utmost severity and firmness and force" if they approached military bases. At least 92 people were killed in the days after Mursi was toppled, more than half of them shot by troops outside a barracks near the mosque a week ago.

Protests since then have been tense but mostly peaceful.

Mursi's foes also called for a demonstration on Monday evening. Their rallies have been small since they achieved their objective of bringing him down.

Crisis in the Arab world's most populous state, which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the strategic Suez Canal, has alarmed allies in the region and the West.

Burns arrived in a divided capital where both sides are furious at the United States, which supports Egypt with $1.5 billion a year in mostly military aid. "Only Egyptians can determine their future. I did not come with American solutions. Nor did I come to lecture anyone," Burns told a brief news conference. "We will not try to impose our model on Egypt."

Snowden flew to Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport from Hong Kong on June 23 in the hope of travelling on to a country that would offer him protection from the United States after he divulged details of U.S. government intelligence programs.

Putin said Washington had trapped Snowden by preventing him from reaching other countries that might shelter him but, wary of upsetting Moscow's former Cold War enemy, has said Russia will grant him political asylum only if he stops actions that could be harmful to the United States.

"As soon as there is an opportunity for him to move elsewhere, I hope he will do that," Putin said during a visit to Gogland Island in the Gulf of Finland.

"The conditions for (Russia) granting him political asylum are known to him. And judging by his latest actions, he is shifting his position. But the situation has not been clarified yet."

Snowden, 30, told human rights campaigners on Friday at a meeting in Sheremetyevo's transit area that he was seeking temporary asylum in Russia until he can travel safely to Latin America, where three countries have said they might take him in.

He has been unable to reach any of those countries - Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia - because there are no direct flights from Moscow and he would risk having his passage barred by the United States and its allies.

The case is an increasingly awkward problem for Putin as Moscow and Washington try to improve relations and he prepares for a summit with President Barack Obama in Moscow in early September, just before a summit of G20 leaders in Russia.

"We have certain relations with the United States and we don't want you to damage our ties with your activity," Putin said, referring to Snowden.

Asked to comment on what comes next for Snowden, Putin, a former KGB spy, said: "How do I know? It's his life, his fate."

UNINVITED GUEST

He went on to distance Russia from Snowden and his political activities and, as on previous occasions when he has spoken about the case in public, avoided taking the opportunity to gloat at the United States' failure to catch him.

The seismic activity changes from steady drum beats to increasingly rapid successions of tremors.

These blend into continuous noise which silences just before explosion.

The study of tremors in the lead up to the 2009 eruption of Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska, appears in Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.

Those quakes continuously rose in pitch like a volcanic glissando - a musical glide from one pitch to another.

Subterranean magma plumbing systems sit beneath volcanoes and feed pressurised molten rock toward the surface before eruptions.

As the magma flows through deep conduits and cracks, it generates small seismic tremors and earthquakes.

Scientists have noted earthquakes preceding volcanic eruptions before, for example drumbeat earthquakes were the first sign of renewed magmatic activity in Mount St Helens in April 2005.

But the new analysis of Alaska's Redoubt volcano shows that the tremor glided to higher frequencies and then stopped abruptly less than a minute before eruption.

"The frequency of this tremor is unusually high for a volcano," explained Alicia Hotovec-Ellis, a doctoral student involved in the study, from the University of Washington.

"Because there's less time between each earthquake, there's not enough time to build up enough pressure for a bigger one. After the frequency glides up to a ridiculously high frequency, it pauses and then it explodes."

The earthquake noise sounds like a scream before eruption when the seismometer data are speeded up sixty times to make them audible. The authors suggest a simple model of brittle fracture may explain their results, although the precise details of what is going on underneath volcanoes before they erupt remain unclear.

Dr Marie Edmonds, from the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, commented: "This work is probably the most intensive treatment of this phenomenon. If you can get an idea of what is causing these types of patterns then you have a route to prediction of volcanic eruptions.

"The question that arises is whether you can ever get these sorts of patterns without an eruption following?

The set-up is typical of swathes of U.S. companies using Ireland to cut their tax bill. A Reuters analysis of Irish and U.S. filings shows that more than 40 percent of the S&P 500 have registered subsidiaries in the country.

That nexus, which has created over 100,000 jobs for Ireland, was laid bare when the U.S. Senate revealed that technology giant Apple had paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through the country.

Ireland, which has courted U.S. business for decades, rejects the Senate's claims that it is a tax haven, but the case has damaged its reputation as it seeks to emerge from an EU-IMF bailout and its export-focused economy dips back into recession.

Company documents in Ireland and filings in the United States shows that many firms have multiple units in Ireland, where corporate income tax is 12.5 percent - about a third of the top U.S. federal income tax rate of 35 percent.

In many cases, several subsidiaries are registered at the offices of Dublin-based law firms.

In Western Union's case, Unit 9, Richview Office Park houses 11 of its 12 Irish subsidiaries. The company made 92 percent of its pretax income outside the United States last year, although a fifth of its staff work in the country.

That allowed the Colorado-based company to cut its effective tax rate to 12.2 percent - about average for a large U.S. company.

Companies, investors and some lawmakers argue it is a firm's duty to keep its tax bill as low as possible so it can invest to grow and return money to shareholders. Western Union said it pays full tax on all profits earned in Ireland.

"The (Irish) tax rate is not that relevant, because nobody pays 12.5 percent," said Jim Stewart, a professor at Trinity College Dublin who specializes in corporate finance and taxation.

"It's about the ease of incorporation, the ability of Irish corporate law and tax law to fit in with IRS (Internal Revenue Service) requirements, and the flexibility that is shown by the Department of Finance and Revenue to any of the multinationals' needs. If they have a problem, the law will be changed."

A spokesman for Ireland's Department of Finance said it did not change laws to suit multinational companies and that its focus was on the local economy.

The No. 2 U.S. carrier is offering $15 a share in cash - an 88 percent premium to Leap's Friday close of $7.98 - to seal the latest of a wave of acquisitions to emerge from a telecoms sector struggling to expand network capacity, as use of bandwidth-hungry smartphones and tablets explodes.

The deal's announcement comes days after Softbank's acquisition of Sprint. No. 4 U.S. mobile operator T-Mobile USA merged in April with smaller rival MetroPCS.

While Leap was one of the last obvious acquisition targets, some analysts and investors are hoping to see another deal involving T-Mobile. Analysts say Sprint could be a keen buyer but such a combination may raise antitrust concerns.

The No. 4 carrier is also considered satellite TV operator Dish Network Corp's last hope if it wants to buy a nationwide wireless network for its airwaves.

And Verizon Communications has been looking to buy out the 45 percent of Verizon Wireless - the No. 1 U.S. carrier - now owned by Vodafone Group Plc.

"The next wave of consolidation is beginning in wireless. This deal ... is an example of such a deal that not only helps AT&T get their hands on more spectrum, customers and revenues, but also further consolidates the industry," said independent telecoms analyst Jeff Kagan.

"Expect to see more deals with Verizon, Sprint and others."

Leap's shares more than doubled to $17 in after-hours trade.

Under the deal, Leap cannot solicit rival bids but AT&T has the right to match rival offers that surface. Also, the companies said Leap shareholders will get the proceeds from a future sale of spectrum in Chicago that Leap bought from AT&T in 2012 for $204 million.

AT&T said it would keep Leap's Cricket brand name.

Including the assumption of debt, the deal would valued at about $4 billion. Under their agreement, AT&T gets all of Leap's stock and about 5 million subscribers for $15 per share in cash or about $1.2 billion. As of April 15, Leap had $2.8 billion in debt, the companies said in a statement.

Major U.S. retailers are experimenting with new e-commerce strategies that could dent demand for package delivery services, particularly demand for shipments over long distances, according to analysts and industry executives.

Amazon.com Inc is building its distribution warehouses closer to customers to save millions of dollars in shipping costs. The world's largest online retailer is also increasingly using its own delivery trucks, cutting UPS and FedEx out of some parts of its fulfillment network.

Meanwhile, major brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Best Buy Co Inc and Gap Inc are shipping more online orders from stores close to shoppers, rather than from warehouses hundreds of miles away.

"UPS and FedEx are not only watching this, they are likely concerned about it," said Lou Tapper, an executive at third-party logistics company Longistics, who worked at FedEx for 18 years. "Big companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart will dictate which direction this goes. Those are the companies that FedEx and UPS need to fill their planes and trucks."

United Parcel Service Inc, the world's largest package delivery company, on Friday cut its earnings forecasts, blaming overcapacity in the global air freight market, customers trading down to slower but cheaper shipping services, and a slowing U.S. industrial economy.

The move came after FedEx Corp said in June that it was raising shipping rates and cutting jobs and costs, as excess capacity in the air freight market had more than offset increased shipments.

Both package delivery companies set their fees according to zones that correspond to the distance a package has to travel.

For instance, FedEx's Zone 2 is zero-to-150 miles from origin to destination, while Zone 4 is 301-to-600 miles. Shipping a 10-pound package in two days through Zone 4 costs $25.80, while the same package in Zone 2 costs 32 percent less at $17.50, according to FedEx's latest rate card for consumers.

UPS uses similar zones for its domestic ground delivery service, which takes four to five days. Zone 4 costs $9.20, while Zone 2 costs $7.94 for a 10-pound package.

Retail companies get discounts for shipping big volumes of goods, but the percentage differences between the zones are similar, according to Joel Anderson, president of walmart.com.

In an interview with ARD television, Merkel also said she expected the United States to stick to German laws in future, the closest she has come to acknowledging that its spying techniques may have breached German rules.

The question of how much Merkel and her government knew about reports of intrusive surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency in Germany has touched a raw nerve and could yet affect the outcome of September's election.

Merkel said tighter European rules were needed.

"Germany will make clear that we want Internet firms to tell us in Europe who they are giving data to," she told ARD.

"We have a great data protection law. But if Facebook is registered in Ireland, then Irish law is valid, and therefore we need unified European rules," she said, adding that people were rightly worried about what happened to data outside Germany.

"Germany will take a strict position," she said.

Last month, U.S. officials confirmed the existence of an electronic spying operation codenamed PRISM. Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden said it collects data from European and other users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other U.S. companies.

In a separate leak, the United States was accused of eavesdropping on EU and German offices and officials.

Merkel clearly pointed the finger at the United States.

"I expect a clear commitment from the U.S. government that in future they will stick to German law," she said.

SENSITIVE SUBJECT

Government snooping is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany due to the heavy surveillance of citizens practiced in the communist East and under Hitler's Nazis. A magazine report last week saying German spies were colluding with the NSA caused outrage.

Merkel dispatched her interior minister to Washington last week to get answers on the spying but he has been derided by opposition parties for failing to present any U.S. assurances or concessions.

The scandal is turning into an election issue and Merkel, tipped to win a third term, needs to make sure she does not give the impression that she knew more than she has let on.

Her opposition Social Democrat rival Peer Steinbrueck accused Merkel of failing to live up to her oath.