Galaxy Note 7 death to hurt Vietnam

The fallout from Samsung Electronics Co’s dramatic move to end production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone is set to spread to Vietnam, hurting an economy already hit by drought and lower oil prices.

“Samsung’s decision to kill off Galaxy Note 7 will certainly impact Vietnam’s exports this year,” since the company’s exports represent about 20 percent of the nation’s shipments, said Nguyen Mai, chairman of Vietnam’s Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises.

The recall of 2.5 million smartphones after complaints of exploding batteries contributed to a US$1.1 billion decline in exports last month, Vietnam’s General Statistics Office said.

Samsung helped to turn Vietnam into an electronics manufacturing hub almost single-handedly with US$15 billion in investments from the technology giant and its affiliates, including battery-maker Samsung SDI Co.

The South Korean company is Vietnam’s biggest exporter, shipping about US$33 billion of electronics last year.

Vietnam now faces the loss of millions of US dollars in exports at a time when its struggling to meet its economic growth target of 6.7 percent for this year.

Part of the reason for the 6.8 percent decline in exports last month from the previous month was due to the Note 7 recall, statistics office head Nguyen Bich Lam said.

“It’s another blow,” said Alan Pham, the Ho Chi Minh City-based chief economist at VinaCapital Group Ltd, the country’s largest fund manager.

“This is the risk of putting all your bets on one company or industry, but that is the natural progression of a developing country: It starts by exporting commodities then turns to manufactured products, industrial products,” he said.

Even before the Note 7 fallout, Vietnam was struggling to meet its target of 10 percent export growth this year, Vietnamese Trade and Industry Minister Tran Tuan Anh said in a July interview.

Still, Vietnam’s economic growth is better than neighboring countries, Pham said.

Vietnam’s annual economic growth accelerated to 6.4 percent last quarter, from 5.78 percent in the previous three months, the Vietnamese General Statistics Office said on Sept. 29, behind only the Philippines in Southeast Asia. The government is pushing for 6.7 percent growth target this year.

Earlier this month local news Web sites reported that Samsung had applied to the customs department for tax exemptions to re-import flawed Galaxy Note 7 smartphones and export replacements to Samsung’s headquarters in South Korea.

The company declined to comment on ending production of the Note 7.

“Samsung told me earlier this month that they have no lay-off plans for now as smartphones are just a part of their production portfolio,” said Mai, who estimated the total workforce tied to Samsung in Vietnam is about 400,000 people, including 130,000 direct workers.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2016/10/13/2003657036&gws_rd=cr&ei=ic9hWNbpIMOc8QW38Z2IBw

WHO- -

WHAT- Samsung Electronics Co’s dramatic move to end production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone is set to spread to Vietnam

WHEN- -

WHERE- Vietnam

WHY- -

HOW- -

KEYWORDS-  fallout ,exploding, affiliates,progression ,commodities,accelerated,exemptions, portfolio

The fallout from Samsung Electronics Co’s dramatic move to end production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone is set to spread to Vietnam, hurting an economy already hit by drought and lower oil prices.

Japan quakes leave at least 35 dead

Army troops and other rescuers yesterday rushed to save scores of trapped residents after a pair of strong earthquakes in southwestern Japan killed at least 35 people, injured about 1,500 and left hundreds of thousands without electricity or water.

Rainfall was forecast to start pounding the area soon, threatening to further complicate the relief operation and set off more mudslides in isolated rural towns, where people were waiting to be rescued from collapsed homes.

Kumamoto Prefecture official Riho Tajima said the death toll stood at 22 from the magnitude 7.3 earthquake that shook the Kumamoto region on the southwestern island of Kyushu early yesterday. On Thursday night, Kyushu was hit by a magnitude 6.5 quake that left 10 dead.

Japanese media reported that nearly 200,000 homes were without electricity and that drinking-water systems had also failed in the area. Television footage showed people huddled in blankets, sitting or lying down shoulder-to-shoulder on the floors of evacuation centers. An estimated 400,000 households were without running water.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that 1,500 people had been injured in the quakes. Tajima said that 184 people were injured seriously and that more than 91,000 people had been evacuated from their homes. More than 200 homes and other buildings were either destroyed or damaged, she said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed concerns about secondary disasters as forecasters predicted rain and strong winds later in the day. With soil already loosened by quakes, rainfall can set off mudslides.

“Daytime today is the big test” for rescue efforts, Abe said.

Landslides have already cut off roads and destroyed bridges, slowing down rescuers.

Police received reports of 97 cases of people trapped or buried under collapsed buildings, while 10 people were caught in landslides in three municipalities in the prefecture, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported.

Kumamoto Prefecture has been rocked by aftershocks, including the strongest with a magnitude of 5.4 yesterday morning. The Japan Meteorological Agency said that the magnitude 7.3 quake early yesterday might have been the main one, with one from Thursday night a precursor.

The quakes’ epicenters have been relatively shallow — about 10km — resulting in more severe shaking and damage. National broadcaster NHK said as many as eight quakes were being felt per hour in the area.

Suga told reporters that the number of troops in the area was being raised to 20,000, while additional police and firefighters were also on the way.

He urged people not to panic.

“Please let us help each other and stay calm,” Suga said in a nationally televised news conference.

Kyushu island’s Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan, erupted for the first time in a month, sending smoke rising about 100m into the air, but no damage was reported.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority reported no abnormalities at Kyushu’s Sendai nuclear plant.

WHO-Army troops,  residents 

WHAT- a pair of strong earthquakes in southwestern Japan killed at least 35 people

WHEN-  yesterday

WHERE-Japan

WHY- -

HOW- -

keywords- magnitude ,earthquakes, mudslides ,erupted,abnormalities

Army troops and other rescuers yesterday rushed to save scores of trapped residents after a pair of strong earthquakes in southwestern Japan killed at least 35 people, injured about 1,500 and left hundreds of thousands without electricity or water.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/04/17/2003644128

Visions of life on Mars in Earth’s depths

More than a kilometer down in an unused mine tunnel, scientists guideds by helmet lamp trudged through darkness and the muck of a flooded, uneven floor.

In the subterranean world of the Beatrix Gold Mine, they shed their backpacks, took out tools and meticulously prepared test tubes to collect samples.

Leaning a ladder against the hard rock wall, Tullis Onstott, a geosciences professor at Princeton University, climbed to open an old valve about 3.66m up.

Out flowed water chock-full of microbes, organisms flourishing not from the warmth of the sun, but by heat generated from the interior of the planet below.

These tiny life-forms — bacteria, other microbes and even little worms — exist in places nearly impossible to reach, living in eternal darkness, in hard rock.

Scientists like Onstott have been on the hunt for life in the underworld, not just in South Africa, but in mines in South Dakota and at the bottom of oceans.

What they learn could provide insights into where life could exist elsewhere in the solar system, including Mars.

Microbial Martians might well look like what lives in the rocks in the deep underground mine.

The same conditions almost certainly exist on Mars. Drill a hole there, drop these organisms in, and they might happily multiply, fueled by chemical reactions in the rocks and drips of water.

“As long as you can get below the ice, no problems,” Onstott said. “They just need a little bit of water.”

Mars has long been a focus of space exploration and science fiction dreams. NASA has sent more robotic probes there than any other planet. However, now there is renewed interest in sending people as well. NASA has been enthusiastically promoting its “Journey to Mars” goal to send astronauts there in the 2030s. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, is promising that he will be able to get there a decade sooner and set up colonies.

Astronauts on Mars would be able to greatly accelerate the quest for answers to the most intriguing questions about the red planet. Was there ever life on Mars? Could there be life there today?

It was not that long ago that scientists had written off Mars as lifeless.

Forty years ago, NASA spent about US$1 billion on its Viking program, which revealed a cold, dry world seemingly devoid of organic molecules that are the building blocks of life.

However, more recent missions have discovered compelling evidence that Mars was not always such an uninviting place. In its youth, more than 3 billion years ago, the planet was warmer and wetter, blanketed with a thick atmosphere — possibly almost Earthlike.

A fanciful, but plausible notion is that life did originate on Mars, then traveled to Earth via meteorites, and we are all descendants of Martians.

Eventually, Mars did turn cold and dry. Radiation broke apart the water molecules and the lighter hydrogen atoms escaped to space. The atmosphere thinned to wisps.

However, if life did arise on Mars, might it have migrated to the underworld and persisted?

For a couple of decades, Onstott has been talking his way into South African gold mines, regaling the mine managers with the wonder of deep-Earth life to overcome their wariness. In many ways, the mines provide easy access to the depths — a ride in a cage-like elevator, jammed against miners starting their shift, descending quickly as lights from the different levels zip past. Think of it as traveling through a 450-story skyscraper, going down.

WHO- scientists

WHAT-guided by helmet lamps trudged through darkness and the muck of a flooded, uneven floor.

WHEN- -

WHERE-More than a kilometer down in an unused mine tunnel

HOW-by helmet lamp

WHY- -

keywords- trudged,  subterranean, meticulously, microbes, 
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2016/09/16/2003655234




More than a kilometer down in an unused mine tunnel, scientists guideds by helmet lamp trudged through darkness and the muck of a flooded, uneven floor.