Hasta La Gadget!

It appears that Lenovo-owned Motorola has a couple of new entry-level handsets in the pipeline. Purported renders of the Moto C and Moto C Plus have been leaked online. They offer a glimpse of an entry-level smartphone that looks the part. The accompanying report reveals that the specs of these new smartphones won’t be anything to write home about which isn’t surprising considering that they’re aimed at those who don’t want to spend a lot of money on a smartphone.

The report claims that the Moto C and Moto C Plus are going to feature a 5 inch display but with 854 x 480 pixel and 1280 x 720 pixel resolution respectively. Both will reportedly be powered by MediaTek processors, the Moto C opting for a 1.3GHz 32-bit quadcore processor and the Moto C Plus going with a 1.3Ghz 64-bit processor.

The Moto C will be available in 8GB and 16GB storage options while the Moto C Plus will only be offered with 16GB of storage. The handsets will have 1GB of RAM but in some markets the Moto C Plus may also feature 2GB of RAM.

Moto C and Moto C Plus also feature a 2 megapixel front camera and a 5 megapixel and 8 megapixel rear camera respectively. The handsets have a 2,350mAh and 4,000mAh battery respectively.

Motorola is yet to confirm when it’s going to officially announce the Moto C and Moto C Plus and how much it’s going to charge for them.

Moto C And Moto C Plus Renders Leaked , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

It has been reported recently that if someone who owns an iPad 4 sends it in for a service or repair, they will be given an iPad Air 2 as a replacement device until their tablet returns. The report suggested that this was due to low stock of the iPad 4 which has been discontinued which was why Apple would replace units in for service or repair with an iPad Air 2. According to a new report, that’s not a universal policy and will only be done in certain conditions.

The report claims that even though there have been many reports about this, there’s actually no official Apple policy that mandates iPad 4 service replacement with an iPad Air 2.

Apple is leaving it up to store managers to decide if they’re going to replace an iPad 4 with an in-stock iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and even in some rare cases the 2017 iPad. AppleInsider hears from sources inside Apple stores that iPad 4 service stock “arrives in fits and spurts” after it’s depleted.

Basically, Apple has allowed stores to make this swap if they have no service stock available of the fourth-generation iPad. Some stores have been without service stock of this tablet for quite some time now so even though it’s not official policy yet, users may experience this change at some point if they take in their iPad 4 for a service or repair.

iPad Air 2 Replacements For iPad 4 During Service Not A Universal Policy , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

T-Mobile appears to have a thing about not sticking to the release dates announced by manufacturers for their new smartphones. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the carrier start shipping new Galaxy flagship smartphones from Samsung ahead of the official release date. The company appears to be doing that once again this year a full week before the Galaxy S8 release date that was confirmed by Samsung late last month.

Samsung confirmed late last month that it’s going to release the Galaxy S8 in South Korea and the United States on April 21st. T-Mobile started taking pre-orders for the new flagship soon after that and reiterated that the Galaxy S8 would be out on the aforementioned date.

It was reported earlier this week that T-Mobile might start shipping Galaxy S8 units ahead of schedule just like it did last year with the Galaxy S7. It’s customers end up getting their hands on the new devices a couple of days before everyone else and I’m sure most of them don’t mind that one bit.

Some customers who pre-ordered the Galaxy S8 from T-Mobile are now receiving notifications that their orders have been shipped. They’ve been assigned tracking numbers as well so they can keep an eye on the package and know precisely when it’s going to land on their doorstep.

We should expect to start seeing social media posts from proud owners of the Galaxy S8 in just a couple of days from now.

T-Mobile Galaxy S8 Pre-Orders Shipping Now , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

WASHINGTON ― If Tom Ward had to die from his work, he’d rather fall off a scaffold than endure the slow death his father did from the debilitating lung disease silicosis.

“I would choose to go much quicker,” he said, “rather than to have my family watch me suffer.”

Ward fears that other workers will face the same suffocating illness as his father, thanks to the regulatory rollback underway by the Trump administration.

Ward’s father spent several years working as a sandblaster in Michigan. It was most likely on that job that he breathed a lethal amount of crystalline silica, a carcinogenic dust that comes from sand and granite. Excessive silica has been ruining workers’ lungs for as long as rock and concrete have been cut. Frances Perkins, U.S. labor secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke publicly of the dangers of silica back in the late 1930s.

After numerous efforts under other presidents failed, the Obama administration finally tightened the regulations covering silica last year, further restricting the amount of dust that employers can legally expose workers to. The tougher standards were 45 years in the making, the subject of in-depth scientific research and intense lobbying by business groups and safety experts. When the rules were finalized in March 2016, occupational health experts hailed them as a life-saving milestone.

But now the enforcement of the rules has been delayed ― and the rules themselves could be in jeopardy.

Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was pushing back the implementation of the new silica regulations. For now, the delay is just three months ― from late June to late September, since “additional guidance is necessary due to the unique nature of the requirements,” as the Labor Department put it. A spokeswoman said the agency wouldn’t comment beyond that.

But to occupational health experts who’ve waited years for the tighter rules, the new delay casts a cloud of uncertainty over their future. The leading home-building trade group and other business lobbying groups have sued to halt the regulations, saying they are too costly for employers. Defending the silica rule would now be the responsibility of the Trump administration, which has eagerly dismantled one Obama-era regulation after another at the urging of corporations. (The rule could also be subject to an appropriations rider by the GOP-controlled Congress.)

While the administration has not signaled that it intends to reverse the silica rule, it has issued an executive order directing all agencies to review the regulations currently on their books, presumably for potential watering down or scrapping. Trump’s own labor nominee, Alexander Acosta, cited that order during his confirmation hearing as one reason he would not yet commit to enforcing the silica rule if he becomes labor secretary.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted the huge public health implications at stake. “You can’t tell me whether or not, high on your list of priorities, would be to protect a rule that keeps people from being poisoned,” she told Acosta.

I never dreamed I would have to spend my retirement years in this debilitating manner.
Leonard Serafin, silicosis victim

The delay of the new silica regulations was not a surprise to Ward, given the Trump administration’s promises to deregulate businesses in order to boost hiring. But it was nevertheless painful to see. Ward now leads training at the Michigan Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union, a personal mission given that his father died at age 39 after “an awful few years” of suffering from silicosis.

“Knowing it was 100 percent preventable is the part that really hurts,” he said. 

Silica has been called the “silent killer.” It’s not visible to the naked eye ― particles can be one hundred times smaller than a grain of sand ― and the effects on the lungs are cumulative. But there are clear ways to curb exposure to silica, like wetting down rock that’s being cut, installing ventilation or dust-collecting equipment on the worksite, and wearing respiratory equipment designed to filter out the dust.    

When the proper precautions aren’t taken, the results can be debilitating. Railroad worker Leonard Serafin shared the story of his own battle with silicosis in a letter his family provided to The Huffington Post in 2012.

At the time, the Obama White House was sitting on the silica rule, and advocates worried that the reforms might not be finished before Obama left office. Serafin had worked as a trackman on a railroad for 32 years, laying out the crushed rock and gravel in which the tracks were laid. He said the work led to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a litany of other lung maladies.

“I never dreamed I would have to spend my retirement years in this debilitating manner,” Serafin wrote. “I find it difficult to attend social events such as concerts and plays with my family because of my chronic cough. Even coughing while standing at a cash register line at a retail store causes people to distance themselves from me. … When I exert myself, my daily coughing becomes a spastic type of cough, which leaves me exhausted, breathless with chest pain.”

Although U.S. regulators had been aware of silica’s dangers for decades, it wasn’t until 1971 that the federal government imposed legal limits on workers’ exposure to it: 100 micrograms per cubic meter for laborers in most industries, and 250 micrograms for those working in construction and shipyards. Many experts believed those limits were too meager, however. The caps weren’t lowered to the 50 micrograms recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until Obama’s presidency.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has estimated that the new rules would cut down silica exposure for roughly 2.3 million workers, preventing an estimated 600 deaths annually. Extrapolating on that data, the AFL-CIO labor federation says even the three-month delay in enforcement “will lead to an additional 160 worker deaths.”

David Michaels, the head of OSHA under Obama, called the reform “the most important health standard OSHA has issued in decades.”

But in the eyes of the construction industry, it’s one of the most expensive. OSHA says that instituting the new controls would cost businesses an estimated $511 million annually. Meanwhile, industry lobbies say the real cost to them would be in the billions each year ― most of it due to additional equipment and labor.

While praising the Trump administration’s decision, a consortium of construction industry trade groups urged Trump to extend the delay well beyond the original three months, saying it “remains concerned about the overall feasibility of the standard in construction and has requested that the agency delay enforcement for a year.”

Supporters of the rule note that those upfront costs don’t take into account the long-term financial benefits to workers and society. Preventing disability and death saves money, after all.

OSHA estimated that the reforms would have a net benefit of $7.7 billion each year, largely due to savings on health care and lost productivity. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, calls the silica rule a “case study” in how seemingly expensive safety regulations can have economic benefits over the long term.

Ward thought the debate over the rule’s financial costs had finally been put to rest. For years, he heard dollars and cents being weighed against lives lost or saved. Now that he’s hearing it again, he’s worried about the bricklayers who will come up after him.

“The rule really was to prevent future illnesses,” said Ward. “It may be too late for me and my generation. This is about the future generation of craft workers.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

SEOUL, April 17 (Reuters) – Pledging that the U.S. commitment to South Korea has never been stronger, Vice President Mike Pence is set to meet on Monday with the nation’s acting president, the day after North Korea launched a missile that blew up almost immediately.

The failed launch occurred as Pence was flying over the Bering Sea on his way to Seoul, the first stop on a four-nation Asia tour intended to show America’s allies – and remind its adversaries – that the Trump administration is not turning its back on the increasingly volatile region.

Pence spent almost no time speaking directly about the missile launch on Sunday, referring to it only as “this morning’s provocation from the north” in remarks he made at an Easter lunch with some U.S. troops and their families.

Instead, he talked about his dad, who fought in the Korean War, and had a Bronze Star for heroism pinned to his chest this week in 1953, using the story to illustrate the commitment Americans have to South Korea.

“As we landed today on the peninsula, I looked out at those rolling hills, and I thought about Second Lieutenant Edward J. Pence,” Pence said.

Pence’s talks with South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, come as U.S. President Donald Trump has warned he will not tolerate provocations from North Korea and has dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group and attack submarines to the region.

The U.S. government has deployed the Theater High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to help protect its ally.

During his campaign for office last year, Trump expressed ambivalence about protecting Asian allies. He has since sought to show his commitment, and has sent his top diplomat and defense secretary, as well as Pence, to the region to reinforce his message.

Pence’s tour, which will also take him to Tokyo, Jakarta and Sydney, was described a “show the flag mission” by one official who assisted in planning it.

Pence will underscore the importance of the U.S. Pacific military alliances in Japan, where he will meet again with U.S. service members, but much of his visit there will be devoted to economic and trade issues, chiefly in a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who also serves as finance minister.

He wants to demonstrate U.S. economic interest in the region after Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama.

It’s the second foreign trip for Pence as vice president. His first, to Munich and Brussels, also involved reassuring allies nervous about Trump’s commitment, in this case to NATO and the European Union.

Pence, a former Republican congressman, so far has been more involved in helping Trump navigate domestic policy issues, said Peter Feaver, a top National Security Council aide in the George W. Bush White House.

The Asia trip will help expand Pence’s foreign policy footprint, but the vice president likely will find himself spending a lot of time explaining the policies and statements of Trump, an untraditional politician who is nearing the end of his first 100 days in office.

“All of that seems to be playing defense. He’s going to want to be playing offense,” Feaver said.

“What the administration needs to do is to sketch out an Asia framework,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and John Walcott; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.