Category: Rubrique

Korea has started its countdown for the expected launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, also known as the Naro rocket.

There is slight chance of rain on the day of its third attempt to shoot it into space, but officials said the launch schedule remains set for Friday at 3:30 p.m.

This will be the first and last launch of Naro using Russian technology including a liquid-fueled rocket engine, should it succeed.

Korea has an agreement with Russia in which the latter will provide three engines taking into account of the possibility of launch failure, not its rocket propulsion technology.

However, Russia has agreed to share design and operational know-how in launch pads with Korea.

The so-called “joint venture” rocket launched purely for scientific purposes has failed to launch twice into space, and everyone ranging from government officials to the public is counting on Naro to make history this Friday.

Experts said that a successful launch will provide a foothold for the country to further develop its proprietary rockets and satellites that can monitor climate change and the environment among other things crucial to the society.

But the country still has a long way to go before it can catch up with other advanced economies ― even China. Korea’s space budget is one-tenth of that of Japan, and one-hundredth of China.

In comparison with automobiles, Korea’s level of space technology is on a par with the Hyundai Pony using foreign engines, said Lee Chang-jin, professor of aerospace engineering at Konkuk University.

“However, Naro would be a stepping stone for Korea to develop indigenous application satellites with our own made-in-Korea rocket engine equivalent to luxury automobiles such as BMW as Korea has sufficiently learned from its past failures,” Lee said.

He added that developing a space program will need time and patience.

Their potential, which may not be noticeable in the near term, should be seen like other industries such as shipbuilding and semiconductors whose success did not happen overnight.

Prof. Chang Young-keun of Korea Aerospace University said that space is all about “trials and errors,” and the next crucial step after the Naro launch is to develop Korea’s domestic rocket propulsion technology.

“That technology will define Korea’s space capability over the next 10 years,” said Chang.

This is the area where South Korea not only lags behind other advanced economies but also North Korea, which already has the know-how in developing liquid rocket engines.

North Korea’s Taepodong missile rockets use liquid engines, which initially pushed South Korea to launch its space and rocket programs.

Apple is set to start selling an 8-inch version of the iPad to compete with Amazon.com’s Kindle and other smaller tablets, but it set a higher-than-expected price tag of $329 that Wall Street fears could curb demand.

Apple’s pencil-thin, smaller iPad Mini will cost much more than its competitors when it goes on sale on Friday, signalling the company is not going to get into a mini-tablet price war.

The company debuted the iPad Mini on Tuesday, with a screen two-thirds smaller than the full model and half the weight. In a surprise, Apple also revamped its flagship, full-sized iPad just six months after the launch of the latest model.

Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs once ridiculed a small tablet from a competitor as a “tweener” that was neither big enough nor small enough to compete with tablets or smartphones. Now Apple’s own Mini enters a growing small-tablet market dominated by the Kindle Fire.

President Barack Obama had the best lines, but perhaps Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney had the best night. Not in the sense that he won the debate – it was a draw if you have to judge these things that way. This final debate probably won’t shift the opinion polls, but it saw a marked change in emphasis in Mr Romney’s foreign policy.

Their debates now history, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday open a two-week sprint to Election Day powered by adrenaline, a boatload of campaign cash and a determination to reach Nov. 6 with no would-have, should-have regrets in their neck-and-neck fight to the finish.

From here, the candidates will vastly accelerate their travel, ad spending and grass-roots mobilizing in a race that’s likely to cost upward of $2 billion by the time it all ends.

All the focus now is on locking down support in the nine states whose electoral votes are still considered up for grabs: Colorado, Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. No surprise then, that Obama campaigns Tuesday in Florida and Ohio while Romney heads West to Nevada and Colorado.

Neither candidate scored a knockout punch in their third and last debate Monday, as both men reined in the confrontational sniping that had marked their last testy encounter. And though the stated topic this time was foreign policy, both kept circling back to their plans for strengthening the fragile U.S. economy — Job 1 to American voters.

Closing out their trio of debates, Obama concisely summed up this pivot point in Campaign 2012: “You’ve now heard three debates, months of campaigning and way too many TV commercials. And now you’ve got a choice.”

The president framed it as a choice between his own record of “real progress” and the “wrong and reckless” ideas of Romney.

Romney countered by sketching “two different paths” offered by the candidates, one of decline under Obama and one of brighter promise from himself.

“I know what it takes to get this country back,” he pledged.

With polls showing the race remains incredibly tight, first lady Michelle Obama made a prediction before the candidates left Florida that neither side would dispute: “This election will be closer than the last one — that’s the only guarantee.”

Obama made it look easy in 2008: He won 365 electoral votes to 173 for Republican John McCain. And he got 53 percent of the popular vote, to 46 percent for McCain.

With 270 electoral votes needed for victory, Obama at this point appears on track to win 237 while Romney appears to have 191. The other 110 are in the hotly contested battleground states.

The candidates’ strategies for getting to 270 are implicit in their itineraries for the next two weeks and in their spending on campaign ads.

Obama and his Democratic allies already have placed $47 million in ad spending across battlegrounds in the campaign’s final weeks, while Romney and the independent groups supporting his candidacy have purchased $53 million, significantly upping their buys in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. And both sides are expected to pad their totals.

After Obama and Vice President Joe Biden campaign together in Ohio on Tuesday, the president splits off on what his campaign is describing as a two-day “around-the-clock” blitz to six more battleground states. He’ll be in constant motion — making voter calls and sleeping aboard Air Force One as he flies overnight Wednesday from Nevada to Tampa, Fla.

The vice president is midway through a three-day tour of uber-battleground Ohio, and Obama’s team contends its best way of ensuring victory is a win there.

The campaign says internal polling gives Obama a lead in the Midwestern battleground state, in large part because of the popularity of the president’s bailout of the auto industry.

But even if Obama loses Ohio, his campaign sees another pathway to the presidency by nailing New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado.

Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are picking up the pace of their campaigning as well, and their schedule reflects an overarching strategy to drive up GOP vote totals in areas already friendly to the Republican nominee.

The Denver suburbs. Cincinnati. Reno, Nev. They’re places that typically vote Republican, but where McCain fell short of the margins he needed to defeat Obama. To win in all-important Ohio, the GOP nominee must outperform McCain in typically Republican areas.

Romney and Ryan start their two-week dash in Henderson, Nev., then hopscotch to the Denver area for a rally with rocker-rapper Kid Rock and country music’s Rodney Atkins at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Then Romney heads back to Nevada, on to Iowa and then east to Ohio for three overnights in a row. By week’s end, he’s likely to be back in Florida.

The following week brings a significant uptick in Romney’s schedule. Aides say he’ll touch down in two or three states a day, or hold that many daily events in big states like Florida.

Both candidates are done holding fundraisers — no doubt a happy thought for the two of them.

In Japan , an app offering real-time translations is to allow people in Japan to speak to foreigners over the phone with both parties using their native tongue.

NTT Docomo – the country’s biggest mobile network – will initially convert Japanese to English, Mandarin and Korean, with other languages to follow.

It is the latest in a series of telephone conversation translators to launch in recent months.

Lexifone and Vocre have developed other products.

Alacatel-Lucent and Microsoft are among those working on other solutions.

The products have the potential to let companies avoid having to use specially trained multilingual staff, helping them cut costs. They could also aid tourism.

However, the software involved cannot offer perfect translations, limiting its use in some situations.

In the ongoing US presidential campaigns, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has said that President Barack Obama has “no agenda” worthy of a second term in office.

At a campaign rally in Florida, he said the Obama campaign had been “reduced to petty attacks and silly word games”.

Hours earlier, Mr Obama decried Mr Romney for shifting his positions as election day draws nearer, saying the Republican suffers from “Romnesia”.

The two meet for their final debate, on foreign policy, in Florida on Monday.

Mr Romney and the Republicans are continuing to focus on the Obama administration’s handling of a deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans including the US ambassador were killed.

The incident provoked a flashpoint during Tuesday’s second debate, and is likely to be hotly debated again in Boca Raton.

US Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has insisted that he would declare China a “currency manipulator” after entering White House.

This is what previous US presidents both Mr. Obama and George W. Bush resisted doing.

Despite intense pressure from Congress, this has caused speculation over Romney’s motivations.

Is he serious, some international economists wonder, about carrying out an action they say could lead to a devastating tit-for-tat trade war and even, in the extreme, to an economic depression in the US if China reacted by no longer buying US Treasury debt?

Some political analysts assume that Romney would simply forget his pledge once in office.

Others say, “Don’t bet on it” – but they also advise paying close attention to the caveats Romney usually throws in when he makes the “currency manipulator” pledge, as he did Tuesday when he said that “if necessary” he would move from the symbolic act of tagging China as a currency manipulator to a concrete step such as slapping tariffs on specific Chinese goods.

Romney’s advisers on trade policy say the point of designating China a currency manipulator would be to set a “new tone” in US-China relations.

Romney would be putting China on notice that it either stop its unfair trade practices – such as keeping its currency artificially low to make its goods cheaper on the export market – or face US action.

Advisers such as domestic policy director Oren Cass underscore that naming China a currency manipulator would not automatically lead to punitive measures. The designation would trigger a US-China dialogue on the yuan’s value.

But it would be up to China, say Romney advisers, to avoid stiff US measures such as tariffs by taking actions such as letting its currency appreciate and addressing the theft of intellectual property.

The risk, some international economists say, is that China would react in a very different way – for example, by beating the US to the punch and slapping tariffs on US goods, or by turning away from the US bond market.

The Obama administration has followed a different approach than the one Romney advocates, pressing China through regular dialogue to allow its currency to appreciate.

Obama said at Tuesday’s debate that because his administration has “pushed [China] hard” the yuan has appreciated 11 percent during his presidency, which is correct.

The Obama administration has also imposed some punitive trade measures. Obama cited his 2009 action slapping tariffs on Chinese tires, and claimed his approach overall has saved jobs at home and boosted US exports to China.

But economists generally pan actions like the tire tariffs, saying the trade-off for what Obama claimed was 1,000 jobs saved is higher tire prices for the US consumer.

Some political analysts say Romney’s China-bashing serves another purpose: to deflect criticism from the Obama camp that Romney, the former Bain Capital CEO, built his wealth on outsourcing jobs to China.

Obama followed that line of criticism Tuesday when he described Romney as “the last person who will be tough on China.”

Former Secretary of State and Nixon-to-China architect Henry Kissinger may find, as he declared recently, that the campaign’s China-bashing is “deplorable,” but he and other voters can count on hearing more of it.

Monday’s final debate of the presidential campaign, to be held in Boca Raton, Fla., will focus on foreign policy and will have a segment dedicated to the implications of the rise of China.