Is the real smartphone excitement happening in the mid-range? Huawei certainly seems to think so, first with the Honor 8 and now with the Huawei Nova and Nova Plus, two new, more affordable Android handsets. Revealed at IFA 2016 today, the Nexus 6P lookalike Nova has a 5-inch display and a sleek, brushed metal casing which the Chinese firm is … Continue reading
Fossil might be a bit late to the smartwatch game, which is why it doesn’t really come as a surprise to see that they’re not wasting any time playing catch up. It wasn’t too long ago that the company launched their previous lineup of smartwatches, and now they are back in a big way with four new models.
As expected these models are part of Fossil’s Q lineup of smartwatches which will now include the Q Nate, Q Crewmaster, Q Gazer, and Q Tailor. For the most part apart from their outer design, these watches will share similar hardware features. This means that wearers can expect features like sleep monitoring, filtered notifications, vibrations, dial animations, and more.
These are also what are known as hybrid smartwatches in the sense that on the exterior, they look like normal watches, but they also come with sensors and features that make them more functional than regular watches. However because they are hybrids, they will have a longer battery life, which according to Fossil should last for about 6 months. They also rely on the coin cell battery so swapping it out for a new one should be pretty easy.
All four watches will also be customizable in terms of its straps where users can swap straps in and out as they please with various combinations. They will be priced starting at $175 and should be available for pre-order starting 14th of September.
Fossil Unveils Q Nate, Q Crewmaster, Q Gazer, Q Tailor Smartwatches , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
According to a recent report, it has been indicated that the iPhone 7 will not come bundled with wireless headphones. Instead it will come with a pair of Lightning EarPods and an adapter in case you have a different set of headphones you prefer using. However we have heard the rumors that Apple could have some wireless headphones in the works.
Now thanks to a recent video, it shows the upcoming iPhone 7 being unboxed, and in the unboxing, it also shows the alleged pair of wireless headphones that Apple could be working on called “AirPods”. Now for some reason the video shows the headphones being packaged inside the box of the iPhone, but recent rumors have suggested that this will not be the case.
Either what we are looking at aren’t wireless headphones but the Lightning EarPods, or the earlier rumor was wrong and we are getting wireless headphones with the new iPhones. Alternatively and what does seem more likely is that the content of the video is fake, which since it is a rumor and comes from an unverified source wouldn’t be entirely surprising.
In any case take it with a grain of salt, but the video is rather short at 9 seconds so you can check it out for yourself in the video above.
Video Shows Apple’s Alleged Wireless EarPods , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Several days ago, a leak revealed that HTC had a new phone in the works called the HTC One A9s which is supposed to be the successor to the HTC One A9. For those wondering about the handset, wonder no more as HTC has officially announced the device, and sure enough it looks like the previous leaks/rumors were right about its design and specs.
Now despite the HTC One A9s supposedly being the successor to the HTC One A9, its specs seem to be a bit of a downgrade. For starters its 5-inch display has been downgraded from Full HD to HD, and its 13MP rear-facing camera with an aperture of f/2.0 has been increased to f/2.2 and apparently there is no OIS either.
However apart from that, there are some slight changes, such as its front-facing camera which has gone from 4MP to 5MP. It has also seen an increase in battery size from 2,150mAh to 2,300mAh, and the RAM/storage configurations of 2GB/16GB and 3GB/32GB are still there, but overall it feels more like a move backwards rather than forwards.
There is no word on pricing or availability, but the HTC One A9 was set at $500 which was pricey given its specs, so here’s hoping that HTC won’t make the mistake of thinking that customers will be willing to pay that price what a phone with even worse specs than the One A9.
The HTC One A9s Is Now Official , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
By its own admission, Huawei has been concentrating on releasing the best smartphones it possibly can so far this year. First with the big-screened Mate 8, and more recently the flagship P9 (and variants). That’s why, at this year’s IFA, Huawei is tu…
Huawei didn’t make the trip to IFA with just a couple of new smartphones in hand, but a new slate too. Following the company’s overly ambitious attempt at a Surface-like device in the MateBook, we’re back to more standard tablet fare with the MediaPa…
Susan Williams, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
On August 6 – Hiroshima Day – I participated in a groundbreaking event at the South African Museum in Cape Town entitled The Missing Link: Peace and Security Surrounding Uranium.
The event had been organised by the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa to put a spotlight on the link between Japan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): that the uranium used to build the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the province of Katanga.
This was the richest uranium in the world. Its ore had an average of 65% uranium oxide compared with American or Canadian ore, which contained less than 1%.
The mine is now closed, but its existence put it at the centre of the Manhattan Project in the second world war. The Congo was a Belgian colony at the time and the Congolese suffered from the harsh colonial reality of racism, segregation and extreme inequities.
Following the war, the mine became a focus for the Cold War conflict between the superpowers. Today, freelance miners, desperate to earn a living and at severe risk to their health, still go to the site to dig out uranium and cobalt.
The Congolese Civil Society of South Africa seeks to bring together the DRC community living in the Cape Town area.
In February this year it presented a memorandum to the South African parliament, asking for support for human rights and democracy in DRC. The organisers believe the uniqueness of Shinkolobwe’s ore has had a destructive impact on their history.
It held its first Missing Link event last year at the University of Cape Town. The second event was much more ambitious. The lecture hall at the museum was packed with Congolese, including families with children, and other members of the public. A number of people hailed from the area around Likasi, the nearest town to Shinkolobwe. Posters were put on the walls, including the flags of Japan and DRC, next to each other.
I had been invited to the event because my new book, Spies in the Congo, centres on America’s efforts to secure all the uranium in the Belgian Congo. This followed Einstein’s warning of the risk that Nazi Germany was building an atomic bomb.
The US arranged for its wartime intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, to send agents to the Congo to protect the transit of the ore and to prevent smuggling to Germany.
The story of these courageous agents – and the dangers they encountered from Nazi sympathisers in the mining multinationals and the Belgian colonial administration – has been secret until now.
Also secret, for many long years, was the reliance of the American atomic project on Congolese ore. Following Hiroshima, a statement by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill drew attention to the “indispensable raw material for the project” provided by Canada. He made no mention of the Congo.
The impact on DRC has been largely invisible to the wider world. But in the local community, it was fully apparent. Oliver Tshinyoka, a journalist in the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa, grew up close to Shinkolobwe.
He describes as a deserted place where vegetation blankets empty homes. His profound words end my book:
Shinkolobwe has never been commemorated. The town is dead and is haunted by the ghost of Hiroshima.
There was little in the way of health and safety precautions. Speakers at the Missing Link event told of the deformities and illness caused by working in the mine and living near it. Sylvie Bambemba Mwela spoke with pain of her grandfather, who had been poisoned by radiation and had a piece of brain coming out of his mouth.
People nodded in vigorous assent to the statement that when a miner went near a television, he caused severe interference with reception. There were sad references to genetically inherited malformations.
Poems had been written for the event, including Shinkolobwe’s Tear by 14-year-old Benina Mombilo. She quietly told a spellbound audience:
When the predator took Africa’s mines, he left behind death, poverty, conflict and war.
Christian Sita Mampuya observed thoughtfully that none of the people living in the Likasi area had been consulted on why the uranium was mined. Nor, he added, are there any records available about the impact on DRC of the exposure to radiation over the last seven decades.
Léonard Mulunda, a trenchant political analyst, insisted firmly that the Congolese must take responsibility for themselves, for their own welfare and government. But he noted that DRC’s lack of information about its past makes it difficult for the Congolese to plan for the present and the future. For this reason, he emphasised the significance and value of the Missing Link event.
Its importance was also highlighted this month in the US by Akiko Mikamo, the author of Rising from the Ashes, whose father Shinji Mikamo is one of the Hibakusha, who are the survivors of Hiroshima.
Last year, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the United Nations Association Westminster Branch invited Akiko Mikamo to give a keynote speech at a conference at the School of Advanced Study on nuclear politics and the historical record. Here she learned about the Congo-Hiroshima link for the first time. She explained:
None of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors I was in contact with had any knowledge of it.
Mikamo contends that it is very important:
… that we learn also about the people and regions that are not widely known or “big players” in history textbooks. But those people’s lives have been significantly affected, and it has serious implications for our global society’s future.
This global connection came full circle at Cape Town’s Missing Link event, where warm and appreciative references were made to Mikamo’s work.
The sufferings generated from Congo’s uranium featured in the singing and dancing during the interval. One song was entitled La peine et la generation suivante de Shinkolobwe.
A deeply moving contribution was a poem entitled A Bomb Fashioned out of Dirt, which was delivered with great power by Beauty Gloria Kalenga and brought tears to many of our eyes. This dirt, she said, using another name for the mine and playing on its meaning, was “a fruit that scalds known as Shikolombwe”.
The question period was a time of dignified and respectful dialogue, when many engaged with the issues faced by DRC at this moment, especially in relation to the presidency of Joseph Kabila.
Some argued Shinkolobwe’s miners and their families should be compensated by the Belgian and US governments. There was consensus, however, that compensation should be postponed until there are mechanisms to ensure it is received by the victims.
The Missing Link event was a searching and constructive examination of the past and its relationship to the present. It seemed to me to exemplify the value of public engagement at its best, where everyone listens and interacts and benefits together.
Isaiah Mombilo, speaking on behalf of the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa, said he was proud that DRC’s role in the history of the world was witnessed so successfully on Hiroshima Day in Cape Town this month. It was a way, he believed, of “claiming Shinkolobwe’s tears”. But this, he added, was only the beginning:
There is more to say.
A longer version of this article was first published in Talking Humanities.
Susan Williams, Senior Research Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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The United States and its negotiating partners agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.
The report is to be published on Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said the think tank’s president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and co-author of the report. It is based on information provided by several officials of governments involved in the negotiations, who Albright declined to identify.
Reuters could not independently verify the report’s assertions.
“The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran,” Albright said.
Among the exemptions were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal’s limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said. LEU can be purified into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.
The exemptions, the report said, were approved by the joint commission the deal created to oversee implementation of the accord. The commission is comprised of the United States and its negotiating partners ― called the P5+1 ― and Iran.
One senior “knowledgeable” official was cited by the report as saying that if the joint commission had not acted to create these exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the deal by Jan. 16, the deadline for the beginning of the lifting of sanctions.
The U.S. administration has said that the world powers that negotiated the accord ― the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany ― made no secret arrangements.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the joint commission and its role were “not secret.” He did not address the report’s assertions of exemptions.
Diplomats at the United Nations for the other P5+1 countries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the report.
The report’s assertions are likely to anger critics of the nuclear deal. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to renegotiate the agreement if he’s elected, while Democrat Hillary Clinton supports the accord.
Albright said the exceptions risked setting precedents that Iran could use to seek additional waivers.
Albright served as an inspector with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team that investigated former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program.
While Albright has neither endorsed nor denounced the overall agreement, he has expressed concern over what he considers potential flaws in the nuclear deal, including the expiration of key limitations on Iran’s nuclear work in 10-15 years.
The administration of President Barack Obama informed Congress of the exemptions on Jan. 16, said the report. Albright said the exemptions, which have not been made public, were detailed in confidential documents sent to Capitol Hill that day ― after the exemptions had already been granted.
The White House official said the administration had briefed Congress “frequently and comprehensively” on the joint commission’s work.
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, a leading critic of the Iran deal and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters in an email: “I was not aware nor did I receive any briefing (on the exemptions).”
As part of the concessions that allowed Iran to exceed uranium limits, the joint commission agreed to exempt unknown quantities of 3.5 percent LEU contained in liquid, solid and sludge wastes stored at Iranian nuclear facilities, according to the report. The agreement restricts Iran to stockpiling only 300 kg of 3.5 percent LEU.
The commission approved a second exemption for an unknown quantity of near 20 percent LEU in “lab contaminant” that was determined to be unrecoverable, the report said. The nuclear agreement requires Iran to fabricate all such LEU into research reactor fuel.
If the total amount of excess LEU Iran possesses is unknown, it is impossible to know how much weapons-grade uranium it could yield, experts said.
The draft report said the joint commission also agreed to allow Iran to keep operating 19 radiation containment chambers larger than the accord set. These so-called “hot cells” are used for handling radioactive material but can be “misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts,” said the report. Plutonium is another nuclear weapons fuel.
The deal allowed Iran to meet a 130-tonne limit on heavy water produced at its Arak facility by selling its excess stock on the open market. But with no buyer available, the joint commission helped Tehran meet the sanctions relief deadline by allowing it to send 50 tonnes of the material ― which can be used in nuclear weapons production ― to Oman, where it was stored under Iranian control, the report said.
The shipment to Oman of the heavy water that can be used in nuclear weapons production has already been reported. Albright’s report made the new assertion that the joint committee had approved this concession.
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This morning in Gdansk we celebrated the 77th anniversary of the beginning of Second World War. In our city, on Westerplatte peninsula, on September 1, 1939 at 4:45 a.m., Nazi Germany attacked the Polish military outpost. This attack is considered the beginning of the war, which ended with a loss of 70 million lives worldwide.
Westerplatte on September 1, 2016. Photo: D. Paszlinski
A small group of soldiers on the Westerplatte peninsula defended heroically, despite the military superiority of the enemy. Unable to change the fate of the battle or war, they fought in the name of virtues so dear to us then and today. They fought for freedom and against the ideology of hatred, represented by fascism.
Remainings of barracks at Westerplatte. Photo: T. Sienicki, CC-BY, Wikipedia
Before our eyes inevitably pass the last participants of the Second World War. Today it is our responsibility to determine the way in which the years of war and occupation will be remembered. Because the only chance of salvation is the memory of people and nations. Our response to this challenge is the Museum of the Second World War, which was founded in Gdansk and will open next year.
Our common project
I have been following the fate of the museum closely for years, from the very beginning. The City of Gdansk supported the construction with a substantial contribution by offering a plot in the city centre. However, recent months have brought disturbing news about the attempts to change the concept of the exhibition in the museum. These news alarmed not only us in Gdansk and Poland, but also the international scientific community and our Polish friends abroad, about which I wrote in the HP entry “World War II Museum in the Focus of International Attention“). Unfortunately, since the entry was published, signals appeared, indicating that the fate of the exhibition, whose concept had been developed in a broad social consensus, is threatened.
World War II Museum. Construction works are comming to an end. Photo: G. Mehring
I am deeply convinced that the opening of the museum will be a great opportunity to present to Europe and the world Polish perception of the Second World War. And for our national community – a unique opportunity to recall the heritage that unites all Poles.
That is why today, during a ceremony at Westerplatte, I turned to the President of Poland Andrzej Duda with a proposal to organise next year in Gdansk a ceremony commemorating the end of World War II. The highlight of the celebration would be the official opening of the Museum of the Second World War.
I know that the issues related to the history of our country are close to the President. We count on President’s understanding the matter of our common museum.
Scouts, as usual, were present at today’s ceremony. I’m grateful to them for their assistance. Photo: D. Paszlinski
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DxO may be better known for its reviews and benchmarks of digital cameras, especially smartphone cameras, but last year it decided to get into that market itself with the DxO ONE, a camera attachment for the iPhone. Keeping to its promise to add value to the accessory long after it was launched, DxO is announcing, right before IFA 2016 shifts … Continue reading
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