Jeremy Clarkson 'punch': Top Gear episodes to be dropped

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

From New MacBook to Samsung Galaxy S6: Changing the Way We Charge in 2015

Goodbye cord clutter, power outlets and fumbling around to get a cable to fit perfectly into a device. This is the year electronics companies are making a push to revolutionize the way we charge the latest generation of devices.

A slate of new releases, from the new MacBook adopting the USB-C multi-purpose charging port to Samsung's wireless charging Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones, have shown how the process of powering up is getting easier and more innovative.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy told ABC News there has been a shift over the past decade from battery technologies to the charging experience to create a "more experience-based focus."

The USB-C port in Apple's fanless, thin new MacBook is expected to become a standard in some new devices this year. The cable plugging into the port and a connected device has ends that are the same size, meaning there is no need to have to worry about plugging something in upside down.

It's also reversible, allowing both peripheral and host devices to share their juice -- and it accommodates even speedier data transfers at a rate of 10 GBPS. For users wanting to connect older devices, Apple is selling a USB-C multi-port adapter that can accommodate older electronics, such as cameras and flash drives.

Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman, announced last August the charging standard was ready for production with a single-cable solution equipped for laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

"This specification is the culmination of an extensive, cooperative effort among industry leaders to standardize the next generation USB connector as a long-lasting, robust solution," Saunders said.

When Samsung showed off its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones at the Mobile World Congress earlier this month, the South Korean electronics company focused part of its presentation on the "relentless innovation" it had pursued, including in the area of mobile charging.

The new devices, which go on sale next month, are outfitted with wireless charging, making power cords obsolete. In ten minutes, Samsung says the devices can get enough charge for four hours of everyday use.

Seho Park, Samsung's principal engineer, said in a blog post that with a new chip released last year to support multiple charging standards, 2015 will be a game-changing year for wireless smartphone charging.

"Samsung will accelerate to democratize this wireless charging technology with compelling smartphones. With our upcoming Galaxy smartphones, users will be able to enter a new wireless world like never before," Park wrote. "Two or three years ago, wireless charging was only twenty to thirty percent as fast as wired charging. But since then, we have been able to double the charging speed."

Even Apple's new smartwatch is upping the charging game for wearables. While its battery life may differ from other wearables that have some of the capabilities of the Apple Watch, the company promised its first product in the category would be so simple to charge that wearers could do it in the dark.

All it takes to charge the Apple Watch is connecting the device to the company's MagSafe technology with inductive charging. Apple says the magnet will slide into place with no precise alignment required.

The Nexus 6 released last October also upped the ante for charging. The 6-inch smartphone has a "turbo charger," which allows users to get as much as six hours of use with just 15 minutes of charge.

Stranded 500-lb leatherback sea turtle rescued in South Carolina

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An endangered 500-pound (230-kg) leatherback sea turtle was being treated at a South Carolina aquarium on Monday after wildlife officials made a rare rescue of the reptile found alive and stranded on a remote beach.

It is the first living leatherback turtle to be recovered in South Carolina and one of only a handful ever treated at rehabilitation facilities in the United States, said Jenna Cormany, a wildlife biologist with the state's Department of Natural Resources.

"I can hardly believe it. They don't strand alive very often," said Kelly Thorvalson, manager of the Sea Turtle Rescue Program at the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston.

State wildlife officials spotted the animal on Saturday on the beach on Yawkey-South Island Reserve, a 3.5-mile-long (5.6-km-long) barrier island and wildlife preserve near Georgetown, South Carolina.

It took five people nearly four hours to retrieve the turtle from the beach, and the animal was then driven an hour and a half south to Charleston, Cormany said.

"It was logistically difficult," she said. "We had a turtle stretcher on a board and we all did our best to lift it. It was very lethargic and sick looking."

Leatherbacks, the largest turtle in the world and the only sea turtles without a hard shell, can weigh up to 2,000 pounds as adults, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Wildlife officials think the turtle they found is a young female that may have eaten debris, shell or a plastic bag mistaken for a jellyfish.

The animal, named Yawkey by the aquarium's staff in a nod to the island where it was found, is being treated for a possible intestinal blockage. It is improving after having its low blood sugar corrected with fluids, Thorvalson said.

Leatherbacks do poorly in captivity, she said, so the rescued turtle will be released after receiving treatment for a few days.

Imprint of license plate in snow leads to burglary suspects

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The imprint of a license plate in a snowbank proved to be the undoing of a couple suspected of a series of burglaries in Massachusetts.

A Lakeville police officer investigating a home break-in traced the imprint to a pickup truck that matched the description of a vehicle seen at other burglaries.

Chief Frank Alvilhiera told The Enterprise of Brockton on Monday that the truck was traced to a Dartmouth hotel.

A search of a hotel room uncovered more than 300 stolen items, including jewelry, watches, wallets, laptops and cameras. Alvilhiera estimates the goods are worth at least $10,000.

Meanwhile, Robert Beaucaire and Amy Peters face charges including breaking and entering and larceny.

Working phone numbers for the suspects couldn't be found, and they can't immediately be reached for comment.

White House: Obama emailed Hillary Clinton on her private email address

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President Barack Obama exchanged emails with Hillary Clinton on her private, nongovernmental account while she was serving as secretary of state, the White House said Monday. But he did not know that she used a private system exclusively for government business, press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

Obama “did, over the course of his first several years in office, trade emails with the secretary of state,” Earnest said. “I would not describe the number of emails as large, but they did have the occasion to email one another.”

Obama told CBS in an interview broadcast over the weekend that he found out that Clinton had set up and maintained a private system that she used for official business “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.”

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address — he did,” Earnest said. “But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up, or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act.”

That information, first disclosed by the New York Times, has raised questions about whether Clinton’s messages to other senior officials were secure and whether she used the arrangement to withhold messages that would normally be archived for potential future public release.

Earnest said that any messages to or from Obama’s email address would be archived under the Presidential Records Act.

Asked when the White House counsel’s office first found out about Clinton’s arrangement, Earnest seemed to try to distance the White House from the controversy.

“What I can tell you is that it is the responsibility of individual agencies to establish an email system and to make sure that those emails, as they're created, are properly archived and maintained, both so they can be used to respond to legitimate public inquiries and to legitimate congressional inquiries,” he said.

Samsung is spending an insane amount of money to beat Apple to the ‘next big thing’

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BGR-Samsung-Galaxy-S6-Edge-3

Samsung hasn’t had the best year financially but it’s not slowing down its spending on R&D. It was reported that Samsung spent an astonishing $13.8 billion in research and development in 2014, the single largest R&D investment in the company’s history.

Until recently, many cynics would have argued that Samsung was obviously wasting its money since its only payoff from these kinds of massive investments for a while seemed to be shallow gimmicks such as the Galaxy Gear, the Galaxy Round and the Galaxy Note Edge. However, the Galaxy S6 edge has been turning a lot of heads ever since it was unveiled at Mobile World Congress this year, which may indicate that the company’s big R&D bets are starting to yield tangible results for the first time in a while.

Interestingly, it seems that this increase in R&D spending came at the expense of Samsung’s Advertising Death Star, which saw its budget slashed by nearly 10% year-over-year. More quality products and fewer advertisements sounds like a winning formula to us, although we won’t know for a while whether Samsung has something even better up its sleeve than the Galaxy S6 edge.

Madrid implosion 'incomprehensible' for Ancelotti

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Schalke's Leroy Sane (L) collides with Real Madrid's Luka Modric during their round of 16 second leg UEFA Champions League match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium on March 10, 2015

Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti admitted he is at a loss to explain the European champions dramatic slump in form as they sneaked into the quarter-finals of the Champions League despite losing 4-3 to Schalke.

Ronaldo twice equalised in the first-half to surpass Real legend Raul with 78 goals in European

competitions after Christian Fuchs and Klass-Jan Huntelaar had given Schalke the lead.A 2-0 first leg advantage was just enough to carry Los Blancos into the last eight for a fifth consecutive season on a night when Cristiano Ronaldo's achievement in becoming the all-time leading scorer in European competitions was overshadowed.

Karim Benzema then put Madrid in front on the night before Leroy Sane and a stunning strike from Huntelaar gave Schalke a deserved victory.

Ancelotti's men swept all before them in a 22-game winning run to end 2014 with a club record four-trophy haul for the calendar year after winning the Club World Cup.

However, since the turn of the year they have lost five times in 15 games to surrender their La Liga lead to Barcelona and were on the verge of suffering one of the biggest shocks in Champions League history.

"We are playing very badly. It is quite incomprehensible after what we did until December," said Ancelotti.

"It is clear I feel very sorry because everyone has seen we played very badly. This is not good for the image of the club.

"It is normal that the players lack confidence. I think we have dipped a bit physically too. We had problems in every aspect of the game: offensive, defensive, desire, fight and concentration."

Ancelotti was even asked whether he fears the sack in the coming days with a crucial El Clasico clash against Barcelona in the La Liga title race to come on March 22.

The Italian insisted he still has faith in the players that carried the club to their 10th European Cup win just 10 months ago.

- 'Rock bottom' -

"I don't think about this (being sacked). I continue doing my job, but I need to do it better. This is the responsiblity of the coach to put out a team that can play better than they did tonight.

"I continue having total confidence in this squad because I know what they can do. We are not doing it at the moment and we need to work harder, train harder, do everything better."

Madrid captain Iker Casillas said the Spanish giants had hit "rock bottom" after a three-game winless streak.

"It is clear we have hit rock bottom in a spectacular way, but the positive thing is that a week on Friday we will be in the draw and we can forget the past 10 days," said the Spanish captain

Ancelotti insisted that things can turn around for the better just as quickly as they have deteriorated, especially with key players such as Sergio Ramos and Luka Modric returning from injury.

Modric made his return after four months out for the final half an hour, while Ramos is expected to make an appearance when Levante visit the Bernabeu on Sunday.

"Things change quickly in football as we have seen. No one in December would imagine what we are going through now," said Ancelotti.

"The presence of Modric gives us more control and more possession in midfield.

"We can't ask too much of him because he was out for four months. I think he did well for 30 minutes.

"He is going to help us in the next games, as will Sergio Ramos with his qualities and character."

7 Marines, 4 Soldiers Missing After Helicopter Crash in Florida

jack | 04:13 | Be the first to comment!

A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter from Bravo Co 2/147th AVN Renegades flies support for U.S. Defense Secretary Hagel over Kuwait City

A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter from Bravo Co 2/147th AVN Renegades flies support for U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel over Kuwait City December 8, 2014. Hagel flew out to Camp Buehring to visit with troops stationed there.

Seven Marines and four soldiers were missing early Wednesday after an Army helicopter crashed during a night training exercise at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle.

The area where the crash happened Tuesday night was under a fog advisory. The area was still extremely foggy Wednesday morning, which was affecting the search, Eglin public affairs specialist Sara Vidoni said.

Base officials said the Marines are part of a Camp Lejeune-based special operations group and the soldiers were from a Hammond, Louisiana-based National Guard unit. The helicopter was reported missing around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and search and rescue crews found debris from the crash around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Eglin spokesman Andy Bourland said.

"At this time all are missing," Bourland said.

Names of those involved were not immediately released, pending notification of next of kin, he said.

Bourland said the Army helicopter took off from a nearby airport in Destin and joined other aircraft in the training exercise.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down during a routine training mission on a remote swath of beach between Pensacola and Destin. The beach is owned by the military and is used for test missions.

The training area includes 20 miles of pristine beachfront that has been under the control of the military since before World War II. Military police keep a close watch on the area and have been known to run off private vendors who rent jet skis or paddle boards without permission.

Test range manager Glenn Barndollar told The Associated Press in August that the beach provides an ideal training area for special operations units from all branches of the military to practice over the water, on the beach and in the bay.

The military sometimes drops trainees over the water using boats or helicopters and the trainees must make their way onshore.