[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 06:37 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 07:37 UK
North and South Korea hold talks
The first meeting between North and South Korean officials in nearly two years has taken place unexpectedly in the South Korean capital Seoul.
A spy chief said to be close to the North's leader Kim Jong-il met Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was considering meeting the Northern delegates, who have said they want better relations on the peninsula.
They were in Seoul to pay respects to late ex-President Kim Dae-jung.
The Northern official in charge of inter-Korean relations, Kim Yang-gon, said there was an urgent need to improve the frosty relations between the two countries.
"After meeting with several people [in the South], I felt the imperative need for North-South relations to improve," Mr Kim said ahead of his talks with Mr Hyun.
President Lee's office said he was being briefed by Mr Hyun on the meeting with the delegation and was considering a meeting with them.
Conciliatory gestures
Saturday's meeting is the first between officials from the two Koreas since the conservative Mr Lee came to power in Seoul in February 2008.
Relations soured when Mr Lee made South Korean aid conditional on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
In the past few months, North Korea has fired a long range rocket over Japanese territory and conducted an underground nuclear test.
But more recently, there has been a series of conciliatory gestures. Two US reporters and a South Korean worker were released from detention and Pyongyang said it was interested in resuming cross-border tourism and industrial projects.
Some observers believe that, with UN sanctions beginning to bite, the North is keen to boost cross-border tourism and trade that bring in badly needed foreign currency, our correspondent adds.
On Friday, the six officials from North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, wearing black suits and ties, placed a wreath of flowers on the steps of South Korea's National Assembly, where Kim Dae-jung is lying in state.
Mr Kim - who died on Tuesday at the age of 85 - devoted his presidency to improving relations between the two Koreas, still technically at war.
He reached out to the North with aid - the main thrust of his "Sunshine Policy" that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and held a historic summit with Kim Jong-Il in that year.
Mr Kim's funeral is to be held on Sunday.
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 10:54 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:54 UK
Taiwan mourns for Morakot victims
Flags are being flown at half-mast in Taiwan as three days of mourning begin for people who lost their lives as a result of Typhoon Morakot.
At least 500 people are still missing, thought killed by floods and mudslides caused by the typhoon, which was Taiwan's typhoon in 50 years.
President Ma Ying-jeou promised to press ahead with a programme of reconstruction and resettlement.
So far the government has confirmed the deaths of 160 people in the typhoon.
Opinion polls suggest President Ma's approval rating among Taiwanese voters has declined sharply following criticism of his government's slow response to the emergency.
Among the memorial services he attended was one at Hsiaolin, perhaps the village worst affected by the typhoon.
"I assure you I will complete the reconstruction and resettlement during my term and I will punish negligent officials," President Ma said at the service.
Hundreds of the victims are believed to be buried by mud in Hsiaolin, which was almost completely covered in a mudslide triggered by several days of extremely heavy rainfall.
The president's critics, some of whom surrounded and heckled him during his visit to a shrine, point to what they see as his inability to take responsibility for a poor response to the emergency.
Three senior ministers remain in place even after offering their resignations over the official response though, correspondents say, a government re-shuffle is likely next month.
Taiwan's parliament, now in recess, is due to hold an additional session in the coming days to review a special budget worth NT$100bn ($3bn, £1.84m) to cover typhoon relief and reconstruction.
The disaster sparked a global response with at least 81 countries, the European Union, and 21 international organisations donating personnel and NT$160m ($4.87m, £2.95m) in relief aid to Taiwan, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 01:42 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 02:42 UK
Vietnam massacre soldier 'sorry'
The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says.
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia.
Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.
Cold blood
"I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry," the former US platoon commander said on Wednesday.
He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings in 1971. Then-US President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house arrest.
But Calley insisted that he was only following orders, the paper reported.
He broke his silence after accepting a friend's invitation to speak at the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club, a US-based global voluntary organisation.
At the time of the killings, the US soldiers had been on a "search and destroy" mission to root out communist fighters in what was fertile Viet Cong territory.
Although the enemy was nowhere to be seen, the US soldiers of Charlie Company rounded up unarmed civilians and gunned them down.
When the story of My Lai was exposed, more than a year later, it tarnished the name of the US army and proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.
[Technology]
Page last updated at 17:45 GMT, Friday, 21 August 2009 18:45 UK
Brighter idea for bendy displays
The technology behind giant video billboards can now be made into flexible and even transparent displays.
These could be used to create brakelights that fit the curves of a car or medical diagnostics that envelop a patient like a blanket.
It has been made possible by a new technique, outlined in Science, for manufacturing so-called inorganic LEDs.
The new method allows these tiny light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to be attached to materials such as glass or rubber.
"[This] enables new kinds of 'form factors' that would allow you to put lighting sources on curved surfaces or in corners, places where you can't put light sources nowadays," Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told BBC News.
Stamp of approval
There are two types of light-emitting diode (LED) technology, inorganic and organic.
The vast majority of consumer electronics use the inorganic version.
For a square centimetre of the material these are 400 times brighter than their organic cousins.
"If you look at the billboard displays that exist already, they're inorganic LED based," said Professor Rogers.
"You can see them on a bright sunny day; it would be impossible to generate that kind of brightness out of an organic LED."
When arrays of inorganic LED's are used - such as those in billboard displays - they are made in a large wafer which is sawn into bits.
Each bit is then placed individually by a robot arm, making the production of large or dense arrays complex.
Organic LEDs (OLEDs) on the other hand have been introduced into some consumer electronics such as televisions.
They are in theory easier to manufacture because they can be made individually smaller, processed in high quantities and spread out in thin films that are easy to manipulate and connect electrically.
However, they are not as robust as inorganic LEDs, and must be encapsulated because they are sensitive to oxygen and moisture.
Professor Rogers and his colleagues have now devised a method that in theory comprises the best of both worlds - bright, robust inorganic LEDs that can be processed en masse.
The approach is able to make thin inorganic LEDs in high quantities in such a way that they can be cut up by bathing them in a strong acid.
The separated elements can then be picked up with a "stamp", with holes cut precisely to size for the elements, and then placed on a wide array of surfaces, from glass to plastic to rubber.
The devices can be placed sparsely enough that a bright layer of them is practically transparent.
"Because you can get away with very low coverage by area, it opens up the possibility of making something that's see-through," Professor Rogers explained.
He said that the nearer-term applications for the approach will be in general lighting or in the illumination of instrument panels, but the group is working toward perfecting the application.
"Displays remain the ultimate goal - we don't need a new law of physics to enable it, it's just more of an engineering question," he said.
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 06:37 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 07:37 UK
North and South Korea hold talks
The first meeting between North and South Korean officials in nearly two years has taken place unexpectedly in the South Korean capital Seoul.
A spy chief said to be close to the North's leader Kim Jong-il met Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was considering meeting the Northern delegates, who have said they want better relations on the peninsula.
They were in Seoul to pay respects to late ex-President Kim Dae-jung.
The Northern official in charge of inter-Korean relations, Kim Yang-gon, said there was an urgent need to improve the frosty relations between the two countries.
"After meeting with several people [in the South], I felt the imperative need for North-South relations to improve," Mr Kim said ahead of his talks with Mr Hyun.
President Lee's office said he was being briefed by Mr Hyun on the meeting with the delegation and was considering a meeting with them.
Conciliatory gestures
Saturday's meeting is the first between officials from the two Koreas since the conservative Mr Lee came to power in Seoul in February 2008.
Relations soured when Mr Lee made South Korean aid conditional on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
In the past few months, North Korea has fired a long range rocket over Japanese territory and conducted an underground nuclear test.
But more recently, there has been a series of conciliatory gestures. Two US reporters and a South Korean worker were released from detention and Pyongyang said it was interested in resuming cross-border tourism and industrial projects.
Some observers believe that, with UN sanctions beginning to bite, the North is keen to boost cross-border tourism and trade that bring in badly needed foreign currency, our correspondent adds.
On Friday, the six officials from North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, wearing black suits and ties, placed a wreath of flowers on the steps of South Korea's National Assembly, where Kim Dae-jung is lying in state.
Mr Kim - who died on Tuesday at the age of 85 - devoted his presidency to improving relations between the two Koreas, still technically at war.
He reached out to the North with aid - the main thrust of his "Sunshine Policy" that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and held a historic summit with Kim Jong-Il in that year.
Mr Kim's funeral is to be held on Sunday.
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 10:54 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:54 UK
Taiwan mourns for Morakot victims
Flags are being flown at half-mast in Taiwan as three days of mourning begin for people who lost their lives as a result of Typhoon Morakot.
At least 500 people are still missing, thought killed by floods and mudslides caused by the typhoon, which was Taiwan's typhoon in 50 years.
President Ma Ying-jeou promised to press ahead with a programme of reconstruction and resettlement.
So far the government has confirmed the deaths of 160 people in the typhoon.
Opinion polls suggest President Ma's approval rating among Taiwanese voters has declined sharply following criticism of his government's slow response to the emergency.
Among the memorial services he attended was one at Hsiaolin, perhaps the village worst affected by the typhoon.
"I assure you I will complete the reconstruction and resettlement during my term and I will punish negligent officials," President Ma said at the service.
Hundreds of the victims are believed to be buried by mud in Hsiaolin, which was almost completely covered in a mudslide triggered by several days of extremely heavy rainfall.
The president's critics, some of whom surrounded and heckled him during his visit to a shrine, point to what they see as his inability to take responsibility for a poor response to the emergency.
Three senior ministers remain in place even after offering their resignations over the official response though, correspondents say, a government re-shuffle is likely next month.
Taiwan's parliament, now in recess, is due to hold an additional session in the coming days to review a special budget worth NT$100bn ($3bn, £1.84m) to cover typhoon relief and reconstruction.
The disaster sparked a global response with at least 81 countries, the European Union, and 21 international organisations donating personnel and NT$160m ($4.87m, £2.95m) in relief aid to Taiwan, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 01:42 GMT, Saturday, 22 August 2009 02:42 UK
Vietnam massacre soldier 'sorry'
The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says.
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia.
Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.
Cold blood
"I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry," the former US platoon commander said on Wednesday.
He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings in 1971. Then-US President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house arrest.
But Calley insisted that he was only following orders, the paper reported.
He broke his silence after accepting a friend's invitation to speak at the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club, a US-based global voluntary organisation.
At the time of the killings, the US soldiers had been on a "search and destroy" mission to root out communist fighters in what was fertile Viet Cong territory.
Although the enemy was nowhere to be seen, the US soldiers of Charlie Company rounded up unarmed civilians and gunned them down.
When the story of My Lai was exposed, more than a year later, it tarnished the name of the US army and proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.
[Technology]
Page last updated at 17:45 GMT, Friday, 21 August 2009 18:45 UK
Brighter idea for bendy displays
The technology behind giant video billboards can now be made into flexible and even transparent displays.
These could be used to create brakelights that fit the curves of a car or medical diagnostics that envelop a patient like a blanket.
It has been made possible by a new technique, outlined in Science, for manufacturing so-called inorganic LEDs.
The new method allows these tiny light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to be attached to materials such as glass or rubber.
"[This] enables new kinds of 'form factors' that would allow you to put lighting sources on curved surfaces or in corners, places where you can't put light sources nowadays," Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told BBC News.
Stamp of approval
There are two types of light-emitting diode (LED) technology, inorganic and organic.
The vast majority of consumer electronics use the inorganic version.
For a square centimetre of the material these are 400 times brighter than their organic cousins.
"If you look at the billboard displays that exist already, they're inorganic LED based," said Professor Rogers.
"You can see them on a bright sunny day; it would be impossible to generate that kind of brightness out of an organic LED."
When arrays of inorganic LED's are used - such as those in billboard displays - they are made in a large wafer which is sawn into bits.
Each bit is then placed individually by a robot arm, making the production of large or dense arrays complex.
Organic LEDs (OLEDs) on the other hand have been introduced into some consumer electronics such as televisions.
They are in theory easier to manufacture because they can be made individually smaller, processed in high quantities and spread out in thin films that are easy to manipulate and connect electrically.
However, they are not as robust as inorganic LEDs, and must be encapsulated because they are sensitive to oxygen and moisture.
Professor Rogers and his colleagues have now devised a method that in theory comprises the best of both worlds - bright, robust inorganic LEDs that can be processed en masse.
The approach is able to make thin inorganic LEDs in high quantities in such a way that they can be cut up by bathing them in a strong acid.
The separated elements can then be picked up with a "stamp", with holes cut precisely to size for the elements, and then placed on a wide array of surfaces, from glass to plastic to rubber.
The devices can be placed sparsely enough that a bright layer of them is practically transparent.
"Because you can get away with very low coverage by area, it opens up the possibility of making something that's see-through," Professor Rogers explained.
He said that the nearer-term applications for the approach will be in general lighting or in the illumination of instrument panels, but the group is working toward perfecting the application.
"Displays remain the ultimate goal - we don't need a new law of physics to enable it, it's just more of an engineering question," he said.
※コメント投稿者のブログIDはブログ作成者のみに通知されます