Apps capture life’s special memories with digital journals |
- Apps capture life’s special memories with digital journals
- Cold, ice grip US as more snow to blanket East
- Atheists face death in 13 countries, global discrimination, says study
- Citroen confirm Meeke, Ostberg for 2014
- Ukraine protesters hold firm, defying riot police
- London’s lure to foreign property buyers seen dimmed by new tax
| Apps capture life’s special memories with digital journals Posted: 09 Dec 2013 05:00 PM PST
While some apps like Snapchat catch a fleeting moment and make it disappear, memory apps can record the details of each day, whether it is a visit to a restaurant or event or a precious moment with family and friends. HeyDay, a free iPhone app, creates a daily timeline based on photos found on the device that are added to a timeline. It also logs venues using the phone's GPS system. Personal notes can be added to the timeline manually. "It's this idea of being able to know exactly what you did on every single day of your life. We want to be the ultimate artefact that puts the entirety of your life in your hands," said Siqi Chen, chief executive of San Francisco-based HeyDay. The appeal is emotional and nostalgic, he added. "Everyone likes the idea of having a journal or scrapbook but most people don't want to put all that work in. We give that experience in an effortless way," he said. The app will also give notifications when people return to a city they have already visited and prompt them to look at photos from their past trips to revive memories. Users can tag people in their lives to remember who they were with. The app runs in the background and uses up the battery faster than usual. But Chen said the company is trying to reduce the battery drain. LifeCrumbs, a free app for the iPhone and Android, lets people record their memories on a calendar and to include a note and photos. Memories can be kept private or shared on social networks. Another journaling app called Day One, for iOS devices, records events and logs the temperature and weather in the area. The app, which costs US$4.99 (RM16), also tracks a person's motion activity such as walking, running and biking, and can log what music was playing on the device during the entry. — Reuters  |
| Cold, ice grip US as more snow to blanket East Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:58 PM PST
As much as 5 inches (12.7 cm) of snow were forecast for last night into today as much of the area from Virginia to coastal New England were under winter weather advisories, the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a forecast. Bitter Arctic air in the upper Great Plains and Rocky Mountains is expected to persist through tomorrow, with the coldest weather extending from the Nevada-Utah region into Minnesota, the NWS said. "I don't think things are going to warm up any time soon," said Bruce Sullivan, an NWS meteorologist. The cold snap will drive temperatures well below average across the United States through midweek, including Texas and the South, the NWS said. Thousands of homes and businesses were without power yesterday morning and thousands of flights were delayed as snow and ice covered roads, highways and airport runways from Texas and Oklahoma east to Virginia and north through Pennsylvania. Northern Maryland, central and eastern Pennsylvania and parts of New York state received up to 10 inches (25 cm) of snow through yesterday morning. Sleet and freezing rain also pummelled the area, according to the NWS. 29 below zero fahrenheit The mercury in Daniel, Wyoming, fell to 29 below zero Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius) yesterday, marking the coldest temperature in the contiguous United States. A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Department of Health said it had tallied 247 storm-related injuries. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has reported 201 collisions that did not cause injuries and 65 collisions that resulted in injuries. On one stretch of highway near Philadelphia, more than 50 cars and trucks were caught in chain-reaction crashes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Sunday afternoon. One man was killed when he left his vehicle after the crashes, a turnpike spokesman said. AAA Mid-Atlantic, the auto group, said it pulled 109 vehicles out of snow and ice in Pennsylvania on Sunday, compared with three the week before. At least three people were killed in weather-related car accidents in Arkansas and Tennessee, emergency officials said. Virginia officials warned drivers of hazardous travel conditions. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency in the state, where the winter weather contributed to at least three deaths. A 5-year-old boy died after a van he was riding in flipped on an iced-over bridge on Thursday, and a homeless man in Oklahoma City died from cold on Thursday, authorities said. A 6-year-old boy died in Tulsa on Saturday when he fell through a frozen creek on which he was playing, police said. NFL whiteout The heavy snow and harsh conditions were on display during Sunday's National Football League matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions in Philadelphia. At times it was nearly impossible to see the game from his seat in the upper deck of Lincoln Financial Field, said Eagles season-ticket holder Pete Peters. "For the first half of the game it was a complete whiteout," Peters said. "I was shivering, my teeth were chattering by the fourth quarter." While he was at the game, Peters' wife and daughter were stranded at the Philadelphia airport when their flight to Orlando, Florida, was cancelled. About 1,700 flights were cancelled nationwide yesterday, according to tracking website Flightaware.com. About 650 travellers were stranded overnight in the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport overnight on Sunday, officials said. About 350 flights at the airport were still cancelled yesterday, airport officials said. Some 267,000 customers in Texas lost power at the height of the storm and about 21,000 homes and businesses remained without power yesterday, said utility Oncor. Freezing weather across Texas set successive December power use records on Friday and Saturday, according to preliminary data from ERCOT, the state's power grid operator. ― Reuters |
| Atheists face death in 13 countries, global discrimination, says study Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:50 PM PST
And beyond the Islamic nations, even some of the West's apparently most democratic governments at best discriminate against citizens who have no belief in a god and at worst can jail them for offences dubbed blasphemy, it said. The study, The Freethought Report 2013, was issued by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a global body uniting atheists, agnostics and other religious sceptics, to mark United Nations' Human Rights Day today. "This report shows that the overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of atheists and freethinkers although they have signed UN agreements to treat all citizens equally," said IHEU President Sonja Eggerickx. The study covered all 192 member states in the world body and involved lawyers and human rights experts looking at statute books, court records and media accounts to establish the global situation. A first survey of 60 countries last year showed just seven where death, often by public beheading, is the punishment for either blasphemy or apostasy — renouncing belief or switching to another religion which is also protected under UN accords. But this year's more comprehensive study showed six more, bringing the full list to Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In others, like India in a recent case involving a leading critic of religion, humanists say police are often reluctant or unwilling to investigate murders of atheists carried out by religious fundamentalists. Across the world, the report said, "there are laws that deny atheists' right to exist, revoke their citizenship, restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prevent them working for the state...." Criticism of religious faith or even academic study of the origins of religions is frequently treated as a crime and can be equated to the capital offence of blasphemy, it asserted. EU states offend The IHEU, which has member bodies in some 50 countries and supporters in many more where such organisations are banned, said there was systematic or severe discrimination against atheists across the 27-nation European Union. The situation was severe in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malta and Poland where blasphemy laws allow for jail sentences up to three years on charges of offending a religion or believers. In these and all other EU countries, with the exception of the Netherlands and Belgium which the report classed as "free and equal," there was systemic discrimination across society favouring religions and religious believers. In the United States, it said, although the situation was "mostly satisfactory" in terms of legal respect for atheists' rights, there were a range of laws and practices "that equate being religious with being American." In Latin America and the Caribbean, atheists faced systemic discrimination in most countries except Brazil, where the situation was "mostly satisfactory," and Jamaica and Uruguay which the report judged as "free and equal." Across Africa, atheists faced severe or systemic violations of their rights to freedom of conscience but also grave violations in several countries, including Egypt, Libya and Morocco, and nominally Christian Zimbabwe and Eritrea. — Reuters |
| Citroen confirm Meeke, Ostberg for 2014 Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:44 PM PST
Eight-times world constructors champions between 2003 and 2012 thanks largely to now retired Sebastien Loeb, Citroën Racing had only three wins in 2013. Loeb won twice in Monte-Carlo and Argentina and Spaniard Dani Sordo in Germany. "It's an incredible opportunity," said 34-year-old Meeke, who has competed in just 10 rounds of the WRC in his career, including two in 2013 with Citroen. It will be the first full WRC season for a British driver since the late Colin McRae, who was killed in a helicopter crash in 2007, competed in 2003 with Citroen. "The Citroen DS3 WRC is a terrific car and I'm going to be able to use the team's knowledge to help me improve," said Meeke. "I know that I'll have to be patient in the first half of the season and learn all about the rallies." Ostberg, 26, is the more experienced having already competed in 65 WRC events since 2006 with seven podium finishes. He won the Rally of Portugal and finished fourth in the 2012 world championship in a Ford Fiesta for English stable M-Sport. "We've worked hard to get an official driver's spot. After so many years watching Citroen win, it's a dream come true to be part of this team," he said. Abu Dhabi native Khalid Al Qassimi will also compete for Citroen, driving a DS3 WRC in Sweden, Portugal, Italy and Spain as well as returning for a Middle East campaign. — AFP |
| Ukraine protesters hold firm, defying riot police Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:42 PM PST
In a second week of protests against President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to abandon a trade deal with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia, demonstrators feared the arrival of riot police heralded a plan to crush them by force. "We are expecting the break-up by police of peaceful demonstrators," Vitaly Klitschko, a heavyweight boxing champion who has emerged as the highest profile opposition leader, said. "If blood is spilled during this dispersing, this blood will be on the hands of the person who ordered it ... Yanukovich." Yanukovich is expected to meet the EU foreign affairs chief today as well as three former Ukrainian presidents who have proposed talks. The moves are among the president's first apparent concessions since the crisis erupted. But in a sign of a firm hand, masked police raided the office of Fatherland, a major opposition party whose jailed leader Yulia Tymoshenko the EU considers a political prisoner. Liberals and nationalists have taken to the streets for demonstrations that have at times drawn hundreds of thousands. Thousands have also maintained an around-the-clock protest camp in the city centre, blocked roads, besieged government buildings and occupied the capital's city hall. Yesterday the police managed to avoid violence while pushing protesters back from positions around some government buildings. In one instance, a column four deep inched protesters down one icy road from the cabinet building. Hundreds of thousands of people marched on Sunday, the second weekend in a row that such huge crowds have vented fury at a government they accuse of returning the country to Kremlin control. In a potent symbol, they tore down and smashed the capital's main statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin. A week earlier, baton wielding police injured scores of people at similar demonstrations. The police have since held back from using force to dislodge the protesters, but gave them five days from last Thursday to leave the streets. The protesters say they will not go. "We will stand here till the end to defend our rights," said Sergei Kuzan, 29, a lawyer, part of a self-appointed security team ready to defend barricades at the main tented camp in Kiev's central Independence Square. "My task is not to let the police through, nor the provocateurs." The tented vigil in freezing temperatures copies a tactic from the "Orange Revolution" in 2004 which successfully overturned a fraudulent election victory by Yanukovich. Divisions Ukraine's dire finances have both provoked the crisis and been worsened by it. EU leaders say their trade pact would have brought investment. But Ukraine's Soviet-era industry relies on Russian natural gas, giving the Kremlin enormous leverage. Kiev owes just under $4 billion in debt repayments and Russian gas bills in the first three months of 2014. Its foreign reserves have eroded to prop up the local hryvnia currency. Central Bank figures on Friday revealed only enough foreign currency on hand for less than two months of imports. It now costs more than US$1 million (RM3.2 million) a year to insure exposure to US$10 million of Ukrainian debt over a five-year period, costs that have risen as the crisis deepened. Yanukovich met Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. Little was revealed of the details of an agreement between them, raising opposition suspicions that Yanukovich had agreed to join a Russian-dominated customs union of ex-Soviet states, which would bury prospects for trade deals with Europe. The crisis has divided Ukraine's 46 million people between its mainly Russian-speaking East, where many view Moscow as a source of stability, and its West, where many native Ukrainian-speakers hope for integration into the European mainstream and despise Russia for decades of harsh Soviet-era oppression. "Historians will say that this is a civil movement by people who do not want to return to the Soviet Union, who want to be free and live better," said Stepan Kubiv, a politician and former banker who is helping to organise volunteers at the square. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will visit Kiev today and tomorrow to meet Yanukovich and opposition leaders. European politicians, in Kiev for a security conference last week, have visited the opposition camp to show solidarity. ― Reuters |
| London’s lure to foreign property buyers seen dimmed by new tax Posted: 09 Dec 2013 04:42 PM PST
A new capital-gains tax on homes sold by people living abroad and a growing British economy that's lifting the currency may dull the capital city's appeal to property buyers from abroad. The government "will put people off by changing the rules constantly and making it less tax-friendly for buyers," Andrew Sneddon, head of tax law at Trowers & Hamlins, said by phone. "If these wealthy buyers choose to go to Monaco, Paris or New York to spend their summers and their money, what's that going to cost the UK economy?" Investors from the Middle East to Asia have been splurging on London homes, buying everything from multi million-pound mansions to apartments in Battersea and the City of London. That's driving prices beyond the reach of many British buyers and sparking a development surge that's increasingly dependent on non-UK investors buying homes before they're completed. South Asian buyers account for two-thirds of new London homes sold before completion, according to Land Securities Group Plc, the largest UK real estate investment trust. The high-end market is dependent on pre-sales to overseas buyers to help get development finance and deal with rising land costs, Michael Lister, a lecturer at University of Westminster, said in a November 22 interview. 'International hiccup' The market "only needs a bit of an international hiccup for the buyers to hold back, and then you're really stuck," said Lister, a former head of UK property lending at Bank of Ireland Plc. "You can't possibly afford to sell to the domestic buyers because they can't afford to pay those figures." Battersea Power Station Holding Co. raised a £790 million (RM4.2 billion) syndicated loan to develop and refurbish the first phase of the site after it pre-sold about US$1 billion of apartments and townhouses in May, the company said in a November 21 statement. The record of pre-sales was reflected in the terms of the financing, it said. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced the new capital-gains tax in a statement to Parliament on December 5. It will apply to "future gains" after the tax goes into effect in April 2015, he said without specifying the size of the levy. Capital-gains tax rates for second homes of UK residents currently range from 18 per cent to 28 per cent. Building luxury Luxury-home developers plan to build more than 20,000 properties in London with a value of about £50 billion in the next decade, Mark Farmer, head of residential property at consulting firm EC Harris LLP wrote in a November 25 report. As well as a strengthening pound, the developers face rising building costs and a risk that investors will grow weary of repeated sales exhibitions, he said. "You'll see softening in pricing, at the bottom end of the luxury-housing market," Farmer said. Investors will remain interested though they will "drive a harder deal." EC Harris defines the lower-end of the luxury homes market as £1,250 to £1,700 a square foot. In central London, about 28 per cent of home buyers in the two years to June didn't live in the UK, according to broker Knight Frank LLP. That rises to about 49 per cent for new homes. In Greater London, 10 per cent to 15 per cent of new homes are bought by non-residents, Knight Frank estimated in October. Moving goalposts Singapore and Hong Kong, two destinations also favoured by south Asian buyers, have introduced measures to cool property prices and curb speculation. Singapore linked borrowers' maximum debt levels to their incomes and raised transaction and capital-gains taxes. Hong Kong has increased minimum down payments six times in fewer than three years and in February doubled stamp-duty taxes for all properties over HK$2 million. Transactions in Hong Kong will probably drop as much as a third this year compared with 2012, Knight Frank estimated. In Singapore, home-price declines accelerated in October from a month earlier to 1.2 per cent. The frequency of changes to UK property-tax law and the possibility of further levies are also seen as a hindrance to homebuyers from abroad. Osborne raised a transaction tax known as stamp duty to 7 per cent from 5 per cent for properties priced at more than £2 million in March 2012. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, head of the Liberal Democrats, which govern in a coalition with Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party, support an annual levy on houses valued at more than £2 million known as the mansion tax. Cameron opposes the idea. Missed opportunity "The government had a chance to review property taxes in 2012 and they fudged it," Rob Perrins, managing director of UK homebuilder Berkeley Group Holdings Plc said in a telephone interview. "Our real concern is that the government will keep playing around and changing the tax every six months. Property is a long-term acquisition and people deserve to know where they stand." About 30 per cent of Berkeley's customers are foreign, Perrins said. The capital-gains tax will affect prices at the lower-end of the prime central London homes market where "speculators" who didn't intend to live in the properties are more involved said Alex Michelin, a founder of luxury developer Finchatton Ltd. "It's not going to switch off the tide. The marginal investor will say 'this no longer makes it as attractive for me and I will stop doing it.'" Top end The tax won't affect the superprime market, he said, as buyers there are more likely to live in their homes. Superprime homes are valued at £5 million or more, according to broker Savills Plc. "It's not an unfair tax. It brings London in line with Paris and New York," he said. "This is just trying to say we want to make it fair for everyone." UK economic growth is increasing more rapidly than previously expected, Osborne said last week. That may affect property investors from abroad more than the new tax as it puts pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates, boosting a pound that has already been rising. The pound plummeted against a basket of major currencies after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., making London homes a relative bargain for wealthy investors and buyers from emerging Asian economies. The Singapore dollar gained 60 per cent against the pound from September 2007 to June this year and the Malaysian ringgit climbed by 50 per cent. Since then, the pound has risen 6.8 per cent and 12 per cent respectively against the Asian currencies. "One of the key drivers around demand in that market, particularly from the Far East, has been the relative weakness of sterling over the last three or four years," said Farmer of EC Harris. "The improving economy is good for UK Plc but it might make residential investment slightly less competitive or good value in the eyes of the international community." — Bloomberg |
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