New Samsung Galaxy S5, Gear 2 and Fit Gear

Review: New Samsung Galaxy S5, Gear 2 and Fit Gear hands-on test - should you join wearable tech craze? 

Samsung will launch their own assault on your lifestyle with the release of three new devices designed to dominate your every waking moment

 

For several years now Apple have snared unsuspecting tech flies into their web by creating an ecosystem of interconnected products that incrementally take control of different elements of your daily existence until you can’t remember how you ever functioned without them.

This week the Cupertino giant’s great rivals Samsung will launch their own assault on your lifestyle with the release of three new devices designed to dominate your every waking moment: the Galaxy S5 smartphone, the Gear 2 smartwatch and the Gear Fit smartstrap.
I’ve been playing around with all three products ahead of their worldwide release on Friday April 11th and while I haven’t had the opportunity to put them through their paces literally, initial impressions are that this could be the start of a magical menage a trois.
The least impressive member of the team - at least in terms of pure wow factor - is the Galaxy S5. Despite boasting an almost imperceptibly larger 5.1” screen (compared to the S4’s 5.0”), a new ergonomically designed back, and - of course! - a fingerprint scanner, it doesn’t look or feel all that different to its predecessor.
The FHD SuperAMOLED display is still eye-popping impressive but the handset comes a distant third in the style stakes to both the HTC One M8 and the iPhone 5S. There are plenty of improvements beneath the plasticky shell, though, including a meatier 2.5GHz quad core processor and a 16MP camera embellished with some neat new focusing functions.
As if to emphasise the S5’s powerhouse credentials, a new Download Booster mode allows you to combine wifi and 4G technology to suck stupid amounts of data down from the internet at once. Parents worried about incurring charges might be more taken with the new Kids Mode, which essentially implements a pre-defined lockdown so that your offspring can’t access anything you don’t want them to.
Samsung are making a big play for the increasingly important health and fitness market, and the S5 comes pre-loaded with their proprietary app, S Health 3.0. An all encompassing lifestyle manager, it combines a pedometer with an exercise planner and food diary. It can even record your heart rate thanks to a new biometric scanner slipped under the handset’s rear camera.
If the S5 feels more about evolution than revolution then the real magic happens when you pair the phone - literally, via Bluetooth - with its wondrous new wearable accessories. The Gear 2 is a genuine thing of beauty, a simple but sleek timepiece that improves upon its lumpen proof-of-concept predecessor in almost every way.

Gear 2 smartwatch

When linked to the S5 (or 16 or so other compatible Samsung products) it can answer and reject calls, show SMS, email and calendar alerts, receive news updates and generally act like an auxiliary screen.
The watch is pretty smart on its own two. It boasts biometric sensors that can record heartbeat and exercise data to sync with your S Health app at a later date and a face-mounted 2MP camera that also shoots 720p video.
You can also connect Bluetooth headphones or speakers to offer a standalone music solution, control your TV via the inbuilt IR blast and, oh yes, tell the time. Best of all, it makes you feel like a cross between James Bond and Buck Rodgers when using it.
If the Gear 2 is a little too retro for your tastes - and for all its elegance there is an unmistakable whiff of the 1980s calculator watch about it - then the Gear Fit is future tech at its finest. The world’s first curved superAMOLED device, it’s almost too beautiful to be confined to fitness freaks.

Gear Fit smartstrap 

As before, a battery of biometric sensors send data back to S Health 3.0 on your phone, allowing you to monitor your daily activities in real time and tailor exercise programmes accordingly. The Gear Fit also offers rudimentary access to a range of message and call alerts and allows you to control media playback from a paired device remotely. Perfect, then, for both the very active out on a run and also the very lazy whose phone or tablet is annoyingly out of reach.
Sure both the Gear 2 and the Gear Fit feel gimmicky but wearable tech is where it’s at right now and there’s also enough functionality here to appeal to more than just early adopters. And while Apple are expected to announce their own move into the fitness market during the San Francisco WWDC event in June, Samsung have more than seized the opportunity to set the early pace.

Kate Middleton and Prince William meet

Kate Middleton and Prince William meet airmen and race yachts in New Zealand

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be meeting the servicemen and women at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base Whenuapai, near Auckland

 

If you've missed any of Kate and Wills' activity here's some early morning reading for you:

• Prince William says they are regularly being offered partners for baby George.
• The royal couple took to the waves in Auckland for an afternoon of racing. But who won?
• Our Royal reporter Victoria Murphy runs down everything we learned from day five here.

8:40 am

Victoria Murphy

We knew they were competitive but whatever happened to being gracious in defeat?
William hollered: "We were sabotaged!" As he disembarked his yacht.
An observer said the Duchess was looking pleased and he replied "I bet she is! Selfless husband! I wanted a quiet night."
Boo. I think that's Kate's cue to start bragging...

Flight MH370 black box 'found' live

Australian PM Tony Abbott 'very confident' search teams have located missing device

He told reporters in China: "We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box."

The search zone is a lot smaller at just 232 sq miles, about the size of Chicago, and is located about 1038 miles northwest of Perth.

 

 

After 35 days of speculation and searching the net is closing in on the elusive flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.

"We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

"Still, confidence in the approximate position of the black box is not the same as recovering wreckage from almost four and a half kilometres beneath the sea or finally determining all that happened on the flight."

9:46 am

Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) Chief General Tan Sri Rodzail Daud has called for maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) for search and rescue operations.
He said the fixed-wing aircraft designed to operate in long range and extended dutie would be helpful should a search for a missing plane in the deep ocean happen again, the New Strait Times reported.
At a press conference at Kepala Batas Air Force College, Daud said: "We hope that the government could provide us with the maritime patrol aircraft in the future.
"I believe our pilots will have no problem to operate the aircraft and equipment."

9:33 am

Anish Patel, President of black box pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom, has told CNN the black boxes will continue to be emitted for 40 days.
It's Day 35 - so time is really running out for the search crews hunting MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean about 1,038 miles northwest of Perth.
Mr Patel said: "We built them with a design margin of about ten per cent so we think they're going to go a few days longer than thirty.
"After that it's bonus time and the batteries are going to start to degrade.
"We're in that period right now so it could be a matter of days.
"We can get a very faint signal [in the lab] at 40 days but you have to be right on top of the unit to hear it at 40 days."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/flight-mh370-black-box-found-3398513#ixzz2yZGmg07o
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Peaches Geldof dead

The 25-year-old daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates was tragically found dead at her home in Kent on Monday. A post-mortem examination proved inconclusive pending the result of toxicology analysis.

ths later.
She married S.C.U.M frontman Thomas Cohen in 2012, five months after giving birth to her first child, Astala Dylan Willow. She welcomed her second child Phaedra Bloom Forever in 2012.

6:25 pm

The last photo Peaches posted to her Instagram account was a throwback of her and her mum.
"Me and my mum" she captioned the snap, posted on Sunday.
Already, distraught fans have commented on it.
"RIP. So sad," wrote one fan.
"ip ...this is shocking x" said another.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/live-peaches-geldof-dead---3385691#ixzz2yZFUmeAP
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7 Wonderful Foods That Will Give You Great Skin

There are many tasty foods that can give you great skin, and including some of them in your eating plan is essential. When you have a healthy skin, you look much younger and fresher, no matter how old you are. The foods you consume every day play a significant role in the health of your skin as well as your overall health. Nowadays it’s hard to choose foods that are tasty and healthy at the same time. Hopefully, this list of 7 foods to eat to have a gorgeous skin will help you keep your skin healthy and young.

1. Flax seeds

Flax seeds are rich in omega-3’s that play a critical role in controlling the appearance of age spots and fine lines. A study shows that consuming flax seeds every day helps relieve skin redness and irritation and helps make skin look fresh and soft. Add some flax seeds to your oatmeal, smoothies or your favorite muffin recipe.

2. Purple and blue fruits

Purple and blue fruits are among the best foods to eat for a great skin. Blueberries, blackberries and plums are all rich in antioxidants, which combat free radical damage. If you don’t know, free radicals come from a poor diet or chemicals in the environment. Purple and blue fruits can also help keep your skin looking younger longer.

3. Sunflower seeds

Sunflower seeds are high in vitamin E, an important nutrient that helps protect your skin from the daily sun damage. Sunflower seeds make a perfect, portable snack to eat on the go. You can also use these wonderful seeds in your oatmeal, salads, cereal, or trail mix. Just make sure you don’t add too much salt to your salads, salt isn’t good for your skin.

4. Chocolate

The great news for all chocolate lovers, chocolate is good for your skin, despite all the myths that it causes acne. I love dark chocolate and eat it almost daily (of course, in moderation), and from personal experience I can say that chocolate doesn’t cause acne. Chocolate actually increases flavonol intake that translates to gorgeous skin. Since chocolate has some calories, make sure you it eat in moderation

5. Sweet potatoes

I was really happy to learn that sweet potatoes are good for skin. They are high in vitamins A and C, which are both essential for glowing and healthy skin. The thing is, vitamin C increases collagen production that keeps your skin supple and smooth, and vitamin A is a potent antioxidant that fights free radical damage and prevents skin cancer. I think it’s a great reason to add sweet potatoes to your eating plan.

6. Tomatoes

When I did my research, I was surprised to find out that tomatoes are good for skin. Many people say that eating tomatoes can cause acne. But tomatoes are an excellent source of antioxidants, namely lycopene, which helps improve skin health as well as protects pigmentation. Add tomatoes to your salads or put some on a sandwich. When you cook tomatoes, you increase their lycopene content, so feel free to eat pizza sauce and marinara too.

7. Yogurt

One of the best snacks that most of us like is yogurt. Did you know that it’s great for your skin? Yogurt contains protein that keeps your skin firm and that helps fight the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines. Stay away from fruity versions since they are packed with sugar. Opt instead for plain yogurt and add some fresh fruits to it to make it more delicious.

Health workers in Guinea's capital to hunt for Ebola cases

A scientist separates blood cells from plasma cells to isolate any Ebola RNA in order to test for the virus at the European Mobile Laboratory in Gueckedou April 3, 2014

Health workers will fan out in Guinea's capital of Conakry to try to identify people who may have been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday.

Tracing people in a city of around 2 million who may have had physical contact with infected people is harder than in the epicenter of the outbreak, Guinea Forestiere some 900 km from the capital, the United Nations agency says.

Seventy people have begun intensive training on contact tracing in Conakry, the WHO said in a statement. "They will go into the communities to follow up on specific persons who had close contacts with patients with a confirmed Ebola infection."

Infection control measures in Donka national hospital and health facilities are also being stepped up to halt spread of the disease, which can kill up to 9 out of 10 patients, it said. The virus can be transmitted by touching victims or their vomit or body fluids.

To date, 157 possible cases of Ebola have been identified in Guinea, 66 of whom have been confirmed as having the virus, the WHO said. They include 101 deaths.

Liberia has 21 suspected and confirmed cases including 10 deaths, but experts fear the virus could spread to other countries in the West Africa region. Samples tested in Mali, Ghana and Sierra Leone have been negative so far.

The WHO said on Tuesday it could take two to four months to contain the "challenging" outbreak, the first in the region.

Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director-general, told reporters the virus tends to transmit more easily in cities, which is complicating control measures.

"Once you get into populations which are dense and people are interacting with each other in a close way in a way that you do in cities, it can it make easier for the infection to transmit," he said.

"It can also make it more difficult to actually identify contacts. Because everyone you have contact with is not necessarily people that you are going to know.

"So these things tend to be a little bit easier when we are in a rural setting and we have a less dense population."

Greeks strike against austerity before Merkel visit

Protesters from the Communist-affiliated trade union PAME shout slogans as they march towards the parliament during a general labour strike in Athens April 9, 2014.

Thousands of striking Greeks marched to parliament on Wednesday to protest against job cuts and austerity measures imposed by the country's foreign creditors, including Germany, whose leader will visit Athens this week.

Schools and pharmacies were shut, ships remained docked at ports, hospitals operated on emergency staff, and transport in Athens was disrupted due to the 24-hour strike called by private sector union GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY.

More than 20,000 workers, pensioners, students and the unemployed marched peacefully through the streets of the Greek capital chanting "EU, IMF take the bailout and get out of here!"

Unions said their anti-austerity message was also aimed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Athens on Friday. Germany has insisted on painful spending cuts and tax hikes in return for international loans.

"It's time to save people not banks," said 59-year old economist Eleni Prokou. "Merkel and the troika should stop sticking their nose in our business."

Turnout at Wednesday's march, which ended within two hours, was similar to protests held during the last nationwide strike in November.

Unions have staged dozens of strikes since Greece's first bailout in 2010, with turnout at some rallies topping 100,000 and testing the government's will to implement reforms demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Protesters say the crisis, which many Greeks blame on a corrupt political elite, has only hit the poor.

"They are servants of Merkel," said protester Aggelos Mikronis, a 60-year old mechanic, of Greece's politicians as he stood opposite the parliament building. "I'm earning half of what I used to get."

DISRUPTION AT SEA

Wednesday's disruption was most keenly felt in maritime transport such as the ferry services to and between the Greek islands and on the railways. Seamen, port and train workers walked out in protest at the planned privatisation of Greece's largest ports and railway.

Greeks have lost about a third of their disposable income since the debt crisis started and unemployment has soared, leaving more than one in four without a job.

Samaras' coalition government has been basking in the glow of its latest deal with inspectors from the troika of the EU, ECB and IMF, clinched after nearly seven months of wrangling over issues such as deregulating the milk sector and pharmacies.

The government qualified for further rescue loans after it passed a reform law required by the lenders last month, but it saw its parliamentary majority reduced to just two seats after it had to expel one lawmaker who failed to support it.

Days later, a scandal over the prosecution of far-right politicians helped the leftist opposition halt a rise in support for the government, a poll showed.

Athens said on Wednesday it would return "imminently" to international bond markets for the first time since 2010 by selling a five-year bond to investors.