Why It’s Time for Apple to Come Clean About the iPhone Battery

It happened again last week. The battery display on my iPhone 6 plunged from around 50% to below 10%, and then the phone shut down entirely. All of a sudden, I found myself cut off from Google Maps (GOOGL, -1.30%) in an unfamiliar part of town, and with no way to text my friends for directions.

This has happened before, and it's a real nuisance. The iPhone pulled the same stunt during a recent road race, cutting off my pace-keeping app and my music, and it's happened right when I've needed to make an important phone call.

But the most annoying aspect of all this is that Apple (AAPL, -0.78%)refuses to come clean about what's going on. While the company is running a limited battery replacement program for some iPhone 6s models, it's still pretending things are just fine with other models.

"A small number of customers outside of the affected range have also reported an unexpected shutdown," an Apple spokesperson wrote as part of an emailed statement to Fortune. (The full response is available below.)

A small number? I don't believe it. In a very informal poll of work colleagues, at least five of them reported iPhone battery issues similar to what I had experienced. Meanwhile, other publications are also calling attention to the problem Apple dare not name.

"Many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s owners are complaining about a bug that essentially shuts down the phone even when it has a lot of battery life left. This is a problem that is happening right now, and yet, Apple hasn't figured out the true cause or at minimum hasn't disclosed it to the public."

And while the official corporate line at Apple is that things are fine, store employees seem to know better. When I brought my device into the Apple Store at the Oculus-World Trade Center location in Lower Manhattan, a worker there acknowledged she had heard of similar complaints, and offered a solution: Apple could reinstall the firmware on the device, which would fix the battery problem, but would also cause me to lose important data, including all my text messages.

No, thanks. What I would like instead is for Apple to swallow its pride and explain to its customers that there's something amiss with the iPhone and that a real fix is on the way.

Yes, this would be a blow to Apple. The iPhone is its flagship product and is a symbol of Apple's commitment to perfection and engineering excellence — admitting that product is defective would hurt both its reputation and its mystique.

But allowing the problem to fester while blowing off a rising chorus of customer complaints is not befitting of Apple either. Sure, the iPhones aren't literally blowing up in customers' hands (à la Samsung) but the battery problem is surely at a point where Apple needs to take action.

Here is the Apple spokesperson's full response to what is going on with the batteries:

We work hard to offer our customers the best product, experience, and customer support. We believe this is why we have earned the highest customer satisfaction rating of any smartphone maker in China and around the world.

We take every customer concern very seriously, including the limited number of reports of unexpected shutdown with iPhones. We also want to thank the agencies for forwarding concerns to us and their engagement with us. Every time we encounter an issue, we investigate using a thorough process including analyzing these devices. We also look at diagnostic information from the broader set of customers who have opted in to our standard diagnostic data reporting. When we find something, we work to quickly provide our customers with a solution.

As a result of our investigation on this, we found that a small number of iPhone 6s devices made in September and October 2015 contained a battery component that was exposed to controlled ambient air longer than it should have been before being assembled into battery packs. Two weeks ago, we launched a worldwide program to replace affected batteries, free of charge. We again apologize for any customer inconvenience. It's important to note, this is not a safety issue.

A small number of customers outside of the affected range have also reported an unexpected shutdown. Some of these shutdowns can occur under normal conditions in order for the iPhone to protect its electronics. In an effort to gather more information, we are including additional diagnostic capability in an iOS software update which will be available next week. This will allow us to gather information over the coming weeks which may potentially help us improve the algorithms used to manage battery performance and shutdown. If such improvements can be made, they will be delivered in future software updates.

Tim Cook, the ball is in your court: a new year is approaching, and 2017 would be a great time for Apple to restore the iPhone's once-impeccable reputation.

Don't Drive on an Empty Fuel Tank

Some drivers see their car’s fuel gauge as a nagging parent; it lights up urging you to refuel like your mom or dad would remind you to clean your room. But don’t ignore your car’s insistence on refueling, because you can damage your car by running it on empty.

We’ve all been in the situation where you’re driving along, possibly singing a song, when suddenly *DING* a low fuel warning light pops up and ruins all your fun because you have to take a pit stop or detour and get gas. You’re either the type of driver that gets really nervous or you’re the complete opposite, relaxed because “empty” is just a guideline or friendly suggestion.

Here’s what you should know, regardless of which type of driver you are. The warning light indicates that the fuel has reached the reserve level, which is about 10 to 15 percent of your tank’s total capacity. You can use that reference along with your car’s average fuel economy to calculate your remaining range, but it’s a good idea to not risk running the car until it’s dry.

While standing on the side of the road with your empty car waiting for a tow truck or walking to the nearest gas station and returning with a jerry can is embarrassing enough, there’s another serious concern that could impact your wallet. And it will be way more expensive than a tank of gas.

In your fuel tank, there is a contraption called a fuel pump, which sends the fuel from the tank to the engine. The fuel pump relies on the gasoline in the tank to keep it cool and lubricated. Running the car with a low tank means that the pump isn’t staying as lubricated as it should and is at risk of overheating. The obvious downside to this is premature failure of the pump.

That’s a pretty expensive repair. Failing fuel pumps will lead to poor performance, particularly with a car not accelerating smoothly or starting at all.

Your fuel pump also has a fuel filter, which can quickly get dirty if you drive with a low tank. Since any sediment or dirt sinks to the bottom of the tank, the fuel filter could end up getting blocked or could take in dirty fuel, which also has costly consequences.

Ignoring your car’s low fuel warning is generally a bad idea, and running your car on empty can cause serious and costly problems to your car’s fuel system. Keep that in mind the next time your car nags you to visit the gas station.

BCTF End Strike

The British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) has officially ended their strike and public school in the province will continue on Monday for most districts. Now the real question for parents are when are we going to get our daycare money from the provincial government.

Johannesburg is South Africa’s largest city. It is also one of the most crowded and densely populated. As a result, mobile phone signal often suffers from too many people trying to connect to one cell tower. The dense built-up environment doesn’t do phone reception any favors either.
MTN, one of Africa’s largest mobile operators, has an ingenious solution: The company is installing cell towers on streetlights in the crowded west and north and of the city. The first two streetlight-towers went up this week in Bryanston, a wealthy suburb. MTN recently won a three-year contract with City Power, Johannesburg’s electricity supplier, as part of the utility’s push to commercialize its infrastructure. Although MTN has a license to replace any of the 110,000 lampposts in the city, its initial rollout will be small, with just 100 poles planned for installation by Christmas, reports TechCentral, a tech blog. More will follow, depending on the results of the first phase.
The installation of a new cell-enabled streetlight takes about 11 hours, making it a much faster process than building a traditional mobile base station, Eben Albertyn, MTN’s tech boss, told TechCentral. However, the lamppost-towers also have a much smaller operating radius of 400 to 600 meters (1,300-2000 feet). Traditional towers can, in theory, extend their range over 30 kilometers (18 miles), but in practice tend to be located only a couple of kilometers apart in urban areas. The smaller footprint of MTN’s streetlight means fewer people will be using the same tower, which should allow for fewer dropped calls and faster data connection.Johannesburg’s electricity supplier, as part of the utility’s push to commercialize its infrastructure. Although MTN has a license to replace any of the 110,000 lampposts in the city, its initial rollout will be small, with just 100 poles planned for installation by Christmas, reports TechCentral, a tech blog. More will follow, depending on the results of the first phase.
The installation of a new cell-enabled streetlight takes about 11 hours, making it a much faster process than building a traditional mobile base station, Eben Albertyn, MTN’s tech boss, told TechCentral. However, the lamppost-towers also have a much smaller operating radius of 400 to 600 meters (1,300-2000 feet). Traditional towers can, in theory, extend their range over 30 kilometers (18 miles), but in practice tend to be located only a couple of kilometers apart in urban areas. The smaller footprint of MTN’s streetlight means fewer people will be using the same tower, which should allow for fewer dropped calls and faster data connection.
MTN is not the first company to think of using streetlights for other purposes. Quartz wrote in March about Sensity Systems, an American company, which is one of many with ambitious plans to turn the world’s streetlights into sensor-packed, data-gathering mobile and i

Scientist warns heading footballs ‘not safe for children’ as West Brom star Jeff Astle’s family meet FA to discuss his death

Heading footballs may not be safe for children because their bodies cannot yet cope with the repetitive strain, one of Britain’s leading neuroscientists has said.
It comes as the family of a former England footballer was set to meet with representatives from the FA to discuss what is being done to research and raise awareness of the issue in the game.
Jeff Astle played more than 350 games up front for West Bromwich Albion in the 1960s and ‘70s, and earlier this year a pathologist found that he died in 2002 from an “industrial disease” – brain damage clearly linked to heading a heavy ball throughout his career.
Astle’s family are now calling for a parliamentary inquiry, and US studies have suggested that heading a football 1,000 times can lead to “untreatable problems”.
Dr Michael Grey, reader in Motor Neuroscience at the University of Birmingham's School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, told Sky News that he and “many of [his] colleagues” believed it was not safe for children to head the ball.
“The reason for that is two-fold. First, the neck muscles aren't yet developed for the size of the children's head at that age.
“The other reason is that their brains are still developing so they're still in a very vulnerable period for taking a blow to thehead, and I should say these concussive events, we don't yet know if repetitive injury such as this is safe for professionals either.”
This week the FA released a set of new guidelines and rules covering concussion and head injuries in football, and produced an educational film starring current and former England players including Steven Gerrard.
The issue made headlines last season when the Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Hugo Lloris was allowed to play on despite losing consciousness after being kneed in the head.
But the FA said it had no new information on the link between heading and brain damage because a the young players involved in a 10-year study, commissioned after Astle’s death, didn’t make it to a professional standard and stopped playing.
Speaking ahead of their meeting today with the FA chairman Greg Dyke and the neurosurgeon Dr Willie Stewart, Jeff’s daughter Dawn Astle told Sky: “We know what killed dad, the coroner's court said it was industrial disease: heading footballs killed dad and the Football Association just don't acknowledge it.
“We have real worries, not just for current footballers, and of course not just professionals - we're talking about amateurs as well - but about football's future, about the children in the game.
“They need to know the risks, then they can make informed choices.”

Even Babies Have Wearable Tech Now

Everyone wants to be high-tech these days, but the creators of Sproutling believe your baby could be the most high-tech family member of all.
They've created a wearable baby monitor, which looks like a more cushiony, adjustable FitBit. The team behind Sproutling comes from Apple and Google, so they know a thing or two about easy-to-use tech products. In the simplest terms, Sproutling is a monitor of a baby's activity, instead of a traditional video or audio watchdog.
It lets you know what your baby is up to, but the notifications are unique. Instead of simply hearing the little nugget make a noise, Sproutling alerts you to his or her various activities through their application. The app will keep track of whether they are awake or asleep, and specify how long they have been sleeping and what kind of mood your baby is in. So, if your baby wakes up at 3:00 a.m., the app notification would read "Awake and fussy."
It will also warn you if outside noise might wake your baby up. And if anything unusual happens, like a strange roll over, a spike in temperature, or change in heart rate, you will get a bright red notification immediately.
Right now, the Sproutling app is available for iOS only, but is coming to Android soon. It comes with three pieces: a band for the sensor; the sensor which measures heart rate, temperature, position, movement, and if the band has been removed; and a wireless charger. A two-hour charge offers three days of usage.
Sproutling will retail for $299, though the presale price is $249. It's pricey, but for new parents who are hoping to eek out an extra hour or two of sleep, it seems worth the cost.

Twitter record smashed by Brazil v Chile World Cup match

A record 16.3 million tweets were sent during Saturday's World Cup game between Brazil and Chile, the most ever for a live event on the social network.
The game saw the World Cup hosts go through to the quarter finals after a nail-biting encounter that went to extra time, with Brazil finally winning 3-2 in the penalty shoot-out.
The final moments of the match -- which saw Chile miss their final penalty -- generated 388,985 tweets a minute.
This broke a record previously set during the Super Bowl, when 382,000 tweets were sent per minute.
Unsurprisingly, Brazilian striker Neymar, who scored the team's final penalty, was the player mentioned most frequently on the site during the game.
Twitter said on Friday that more than 300 million messages had been sent about the tournament since the group stages of the football competition began, with the event "already becoming one of the most talked about events on Twitter of all time".
Before Saturday, the record for the most-commented-on match on the network was that between Brazil and Croatia on June 12, which saw 12.2 million messages sent.

Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement gains momentum

Waving colonial-era flags, tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters have staged a massive rally in Hong Kong demanding full electoral freedom. But will this be enough for Beijing to back down?
"The huge crowds gathered here reflect the willingness of the people of Hong Kong to take action and sacrifice for the sake of democracy," said Joseph Cheng. The political science professor from the City University of Hong Kong is one of many city residents who took part in the this year's July 1 rally to mark the day the territory was returned to China in 1997 after more than a century of British rule.
Passions were running particularly high this time around as tens of thousands marched through the heart of the city demanding more democracy and accusing Beijing of taking their civil liberties away. Some, chanting anti-Beijing slogans and waving colonial-era flags, even called for the city's chief executive to be sacked in a move seen by many as a direct challenge to the rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
The mass demonstration came just a day after polls closed in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform which drew an unexpectedly high turnout of nearly 800,000 votes - more than a fifth of the city's electorate - but was slammed by Beijing as an "illegal farce" that was "tinged with mincing ludicrousness."
The 10-day poll - which took place online and at physical polling stations - was intended to urge Chinese authorities to allow opposition democrats to run in a 2017 citywide election for a new chief minister. The vote gave city residents three options on how the poll should be carried out - all of which included the public having some influence on the selection of candidates. Beijing has promised direct elections in 2017, but has ruled out allowing voters to choose who can run for the top job. Both the vote and the rally were organized by the pro-democratic protest group Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP).
In a DW interview, Joseph Cheng, described the poll as "platform for the Hong Kong people to articulate their views on political reform," adding that true universal suffrage was the only way to ensure that the people will have a meaningful choice and that the vote will be genuinely competitive. But Cheng also pointed out that Chinese authorities are extremely sensitive to the idea of allowing such polls as they could be interpreted as a challenge to the CPC's authority. "The authorities are also very worried about similar votes being carried out in Taiwan or regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang," he added.
Shortly before the referendum got underway, China's State Council's Information Office issued a white paper on June 9 reiterating that Beijing had "comprehensive jurisdiction" over the former British colony. The policy document stated that some people were "confused or lopsided in their understanding of one country, two systems and that this has led to "many wrong views" about the city's economy, society and the development of its political system.
Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the US at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, says Hong Kong is only as special as Beijing allows it to be. However, it is not in China's interest that the territory functions simply as one more Chinese city. "Beijing benefits from Hong Kong's openness and from its attractiveness to foreign corporations. Cracking down too harshly on Hong Kong would put the lie to overtures the PRC makes to Taiwan under the "One Country, Two Systems' banner."
Most Hong Kong residents are pragmatic and hope for good relations with the People's Republic, Daly added. But they also want the city to remain unique and modern. The want to enjoy freedoms of speech, information, and association, and they want to participate meaningfully in their own governance.
Hong Kong's Basic Law promised those things to the people of Hong Kong and since 1997, Beijing has, in the main, honored its promise. "The recent White Paper issued by Beijing, however, called the promise into question with its implication that Hong Kong administrative personnel, including judges, must now take direction from Beijing."
China scholar Perry Link told DW that the aim of the white paper was to intimidate democrats and make clear that Beijing intends to continue its 'digestion' of Hong Kong. "It appears to be a clear violation of Deng Xiaoping's promise of "one country, two systems" for fifty years. But in fact it is not really new. Deng's promise was never a promise in the conventional sense," Link said.
Link believes that Beijing's increasingly tight control of Hong Kong won't make much of a difference economically as most of the city's tycoons are already allied with Beijing. Politically, however, this will sharpen and deepen the political problems in Hong Kong, he said. "This will enforce a surface appearance of unity with Beijing, but cover a resentful populace who will now have even more reason to feel resentful", the China expert said.
Tim Pringle, a Hong Kong permanent resident and senior lecturer at SOAS University of London, has a similar view. He told Hong Kong society had become increasingly polarized since 2003 when the city witnessed the first great pro-democracy march of the post-colonial era.
Pringle explains that while a vibrant students and workers' movement has emerged, what happens in the city does not take place in isolation. "If Beijing fails to exercise considerable influence over the arrangements for the next election of Chief Executive, this would give succor to those demanding democratic reforms in the mainland. Therefore, the chances of an entirely unfettered election in 2017 are slim."
Pringle points to the fact that despite the massive support in favor of direct elections for the chief executive post, there are also significant number of Hong Kong people who support Beijing as an expression of their patriotism or because they agree with the argument that Hong Kong folks are more concerned with 'making money' than engaging in political struggles. "While there is strong evidence to suggest that the majority of Hong Kong people support direct elections, it is not the case that Beijing is on a collision course with Hong Kong residents in general."
According to Daly, the protests will, therefore, have only a limited impact as China will continue to insist that only candidates who "Love China" - i.e. take directions from Beijing when it chooses to provide it - are qualified to run for chief post. "Hong Kong is, irrevocably, part of China and, under the Beijing formula, 'without the Communist Party, there would be no new China.' That's the bottom line; the interests of the Party and Chinese State are one. Hong Kong must operate under that umbrella."
As for the pro-democracy campaign, analysts argue Beijing will prefer to divide and weaken this movement and perhaps isolate its more "radical" wing rather than collide with it head-on. "A key challenge for the movement will be to maintain unity as some of the more radical actions planned unfold – such as occupying the central financial district – while leaving room for Beijing to compromise," said Pringle.
Daly shares a similar view: "Beijing needs to find a way to acknowledge the Hong Kong demonstrators' concerns - to mollify them without emboldening them. But it's getting harder to square that circle. To date, mollification hasn't been style of Chinese President Xi Jinping."

Tim Hortons to launch credit card

With the press of a button, Tim Hortons (TSX:THI) is hoping Canadians will warm to a new credit card partnership.
The coffee and doughnut chain has joined CIBC (TSX:CM) for the “Double Double Visa Card,” which includes physical buttons built into the plastic.
Cardholders can press one of two options on the face of the card — a button that accesses their Visa account or another that lets users redeem loyalty points for products at the company’s restaurants.
Each button has a coloured light that illuminates when the user activates one of the options on the card.
While credit cards with buttons aren’t new, this is a first for Canada.
Previously, Citibank ran a pilot program in the U.S. which tested button technology with a select number of its clients. That card has since been discontinued.
The CIBC and Tim Hortons card allows users to earn points on purchases they charge to their no annual fee Visa card, collecting a cent on every dollar in Tims Cash rewards, the companies said.
CIBC launched the venture with Tim Hortons shortly after losing exclusivity for an Aeroplan-branded credit card. While CIBC still offers a card with Aeroplan, the loyalty points company has also launched a separate venture with TD Bank (TSX:TD).
The Tim Hortons-branded credit card is the first step in rolling out a loyalty program. The company has yet to announce when the full-fledged rewards program will debut.
The Tim Hortons credit card will be officially launched on Wednesday.

Cuba Finally Makes It Easier to Buy Cars, but No One Can Afford Them

At the beginning of this year, the Cuban people took a small step towards larger societal equality. For decades, a special permit was required to purchase a car, and permits were only granted to diplomats, technicians, doctors, those on foreign missions, and those with bank accounts outside of Cuba. This permitting system was removed this year, allowing anyone to purchase a vehicle from one of Cuba's eleven state-run car dealerships. It also allowed for used car sales between people.
While Cubans are now legally able to purchase cars, only fifty cars and four motorcycles have been sold since the permitting system was removed. Considering 11 million live in Cuba, this is a staggeringly low amount. The permitting system was announced in December, but prices on cars shot up in January.
A Peugeot that runs $53,000 in the United Kingdom sells for $262,000 at a Havana dealership. A Kia Rio sells for $13,600 in the United States, but for $42,000 in Cuba. Dealerships are also allowed to sell outdated rental cars and other used vehicles, though these are overpriced as well. Sales totaled $1.3 million throughout all eleven state run dealerships, an average of $23,800 per vehicle. Most of these appear to be used cars.
The average wage in Cuba is about $20 a month, and most people earn this working for the government. That's 175 years of work to afford a Kia Rio, if you had no other expenses. Cuban authorities have said 75 percent of the income from the car sales will go to public transportation efforts.

Swiss prepare for Messi test, U.S. face Belgium

Lionel Messi has been the key to Argentina's perfect start at the World Cup, scoring four of their six goals in three straight group wins, and the South Americans hope his blistering form continues when they face Switzerland in the last 16 on Tuesday.
Also battling for a place in the quarter-finals are the United States and Belgium, who arrived as one of the favorites to lift the trophy but have not yet fired on all cylinders.
Although Argentina have yet to reach the heights many expected of them in Brazil, Messi has been on a different planet, electrifying crowds and banishing memories of the goal drought he endured in South Africa four years ago.
Fellow forward Sergio Aguero is a major doubt after picking up an injury against Nigeria in their final group game, however, and should he miss out manager Alejandro Sabella may opt for the versatile Ezequiel Lavezzi.
Sabella, though, was playing his cards close to his chest on the eve of the match in Sao Paulo.
"In case Lavezzi plays he can play in two different positions," he told reporters. "But I am telling you, the line-up is not decided yet."
Switzerland hope Xherdan Shaqiri, dubbed the 'Alpine Messi' for his impish skills, will provide the key to beating Argentina for the first time.
The bustling little forward has been in top form for the Swiss, stealing the show with a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Honduras that sealed their spot in the last 16.
"The midfield will feed him, and he plays really well up front," captain Gokhan Inler said of Shaqiri. "The good thing is he cannot be figured out that easily. We need to have him free."
In Salvador, the United States will look to sprint out of the blocks to unsettle slow-starting Belgium.
The Belgians ground out group wins over Algeria, Russia and South Korea but were far from impressive, failing to score in any of those games until the last 20 minutes.
Defender Thomas Vermaelen has not recovered from a hamstring injury and will miss the game while captain Vincent Kompany will undergo a late fitness test.
But coach Marc Wilmots expects playmaker Eden Hazard, another one who has yet to hit full stride, to have a big influence on the game.
"I’m sure that we’ll see a massive Hazard performance tomorrow which could prove decisive," he added.
After muscling out Portugal and Ghana for second spot behind Germany in Group G, the United States have grown in confidence and plan to go on the offensive.
"We have no fear at all," U.S. coach Juergen Klinsmann said on Monday. "We feel fresh, we have recovered well after every game so far. We feel we have just started this adventure."
Klinsmann will be able to call on forward Jozy Altidore, who has recovered from a hamstring injury picked up in their group opener.

'I had to step on my friends' bodies to escape': mine survivor

Murat Yokus may have escaped Turkey's deadliest mine explosion, but he is unable to erase the memories of his friends falling one by one to the ground, suffocated by thick fumes that engulfed the tunnels where they were trapped.
"I had step on the bodies of my friends to escape, I had to trample on them," he recounted, his eyes swimming with tears, five days after the tragedy which claimed 301 lives.
The 29-year-old was among 485 miners who managed to get out alive from the explosion and fire in a coal mine in the western town of Soma on Tuesday.
And only just.
"What happened is indescribable," Murat recalled.
"I was about to get out of the mine to go home when we saw fumes arriving," he said. "At first, my boss told us to wait, but we started to get impatient."
More on mine explosion
-Families bury dead amid protests
-Blast spotlights mine safety concerns
About a hundred of them were crammed in an area of 300 square metres (1,076 square feet).
And when he learnt that colleagues who were located in another part of the mine had all died from asphxiation, he decided to disobey his boss's orders.
"I told myself 'I am not going to die here, not now'," Murat said.
"I took the oxygen mask that I had not used until then and I started to walk. When I looked back, I saw many of my friends on the ground."
They were "suffocating, fighting to survive like sacrificial animals."
"They were struggling against death."
Convinced then that he would breathe his last underground, Murat said he thought of "his two young children, his wife, his family".
"I recited my last prayer," before passing out, he said.
Luckily, he was quickly evacuated.
As he was carried out by rescue workers, Murat regained consciousness and chose to walk out on his own.
"You cannot imagine the panic, my colleagues pacing back and forth, the stress, the fear," he said.
Even if miners are aware that theirs is a dangerous job, Yokus said no one is ever really prepared for such an accident.
A preliminary expert report on the accident, obtained by the Milliyet newspaper, pointed to several safety violations in the mine, including a shortage of carbon monoxide detectors and ceilings made of wood instead of metal.
But Yokus, who risked his life for 800 euros a month, would not criticise his company or question if safety standards had been met in the mine.
Despite everything, he is planning to go back underground for another ten years in order to qualify for an early retirement.
"We cannot do anything else. There is no farming here, no companies, no other jobs," said Yokus, whose father also worked as a miner.
"But I will go to another mine," he said.
"In this one, I have lost too many friends to be able to step in there again."

Don Meyer, among coaches with most wins, has died

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Don Meyer, one of the winningest coaches in college men’s basketball, has died in South Dakota.
Family spokeswoman Brenda Dreyer says the former Northern State coach died of cancer at 6:52 a.m. Sunday. He was 69.
Meyer led his teams to the playoffs 19 times and compiled a 923-324 record. He retired in 2010, after a decade at Northern State in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and 24 seasons at Lispcomb in Tennessee.
Four months after a near-fatal car accident in 2008 and a cancer diagnosis, Meyer was coaching from a wheelchair when he passed Bobby Knight as the NCAA’s winningest coach in men’s basketball history. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski took the title in 2012.
Meyer was a standout athlete at Northern Colorado. He began his head coaching career at Hamline in Minnesota.

Cuba mobile email experiment causes chaos

HAVANA - On an island where most people have no Internet access, the arrival of mobile phone email service was embraced with joy.
Tens of thousands of Cubans began emailing like crazy in March — for days, until the service started to fail, taking much of Cuba's already shaky voice and text-messaging mobile service down with it
The island's aging cellphone towers became swamped by the new flood of email traffic, creating havoc for anyone trying to use the system. Users had to make eight or nine attempts to successfully send an email. Even voice calls by non-subscribers' began to drop mid-conversation. Callers sounded like they were phoning from the bottom of the sea. Ordinary text messages arrived days late, or not at all.
Since then, the state telecom monopoly Etecsa has issued a rare apology and the troubles have eased. But problems with the service, dubbed Nauta, offer a rare window into the Internet in Cuba, where the digital age has been achingly slow to spread since arriving in 1996, leaving the country virtually isolated from the world of streaming video, photo-sharing and 4G cellphones.
Cuba's government blames the technological problems on a U.S. embargo that prevents most American businesses from selling products to the Caribbean country. Critics of the government say it deliberately strangles the Internet to halt the spread of dissent. Other observers offer a less political explanation: a government desperate for foreign exchange is investing little in infrastructure improvements while extracting as much revenue as possible from communications services largely paid for by Cubans' wealthier overseas relatives.
Experts say that last explanation appears to be the primary culprit in the case of Nauta, in which the government tried to open connections with the world but floundered due to apparent poor planning and underinvestment.
"Cuba is extremely broke," said Larry Press, a professor of information systems and expert on Cuban telecommunications at California State University, Dominguez Hills. "If they had access to tons of capital they would probably expand (Internet service) further."
About 100,000 people — around 5 per cent of Cuban cellphone users — had subscribed to the service even though it cost 50 times that of many U.S. data plans.
Radio scriptwriter Lisandra Ayala, 36, stood in line for hours in March outside an Etecsa office, dreaming of zipping emails back and forth with her favourite cousin in Canada. Like many Cubans, she has long had a smartphone — a status symbol frequently brought in by visiting relatives.
She paid $1.50 to sign up for a Nauta contract that was supposed to let her send emails with the ability to attach photos, but not send video or check the Web. Even the price of $1 per megabyte, many times higher than in virtually any developed country, didn't deter her.
"I was so excited at first, but then the experience turned into a total disaster," Ayala said. After a week of decent service, she found it impossible to open the icon for Nauta without trying at least six times; voice calls dropped or didn't go through and text messages disappeared mid-air.
"We have been preparing for more than a year," Hilda Arias, director of Etecsa, told official media late last month. "Customers' expectations really exceeded our vision ... this provoked an overload."
She promised that the situation would improve, albeit slowly.
With cellular rates as high as 35 cents a minute for domestic calls, Etecsa earned roughly $500 million last year, revenue that's been rising slowly since 2008, according to Emilio Morales, a systems engineer who heads the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group, a private consultant that analyzes Cuba's scanty public information about government revenues and operations to produce estimates widely considered reliable by Cuba-watchers.
"There are few businesses in Cuba that work as well as Etecsa," he said.
The group's studies show that 54 per cent of payments to Etecsa come directly from the Cuban diaspora. Morales believes Cubans pay much of the rest out of the estimated $2.6 billion a year in remittances from abroad. And, while most state workers only make $20 a month, a new class of roughly 400,000 independent businessmen and their employees also make heavy use of cellphones for advertising with text-message as well as ordinary business calls.
Authorities here say they are trying to offer a range of new Internet services by year's end, including mobile Web access and unrestricted home Internet access, currently limited to select government officials and employees of foreign businesses and embassies.
But customers remain wary.
"Nauta failed and stopped the whole mobile communication system from working properly," said Indira Perez, a 24-year-old university employee "If they don't prepare themselves better when they want to broaden Internet access, it's going to be total chaos."

NY Attorney General Calls for Ban of Soaps Containing Microbeads

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has called for a state-wide ban of soaps containing microbeads, citing recent studies that show how harmful the tiny cosmetic abrasives can be to the environment.
The office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman released a new report detailing the damages that microbeads - tiny plastic beads that are used as cleansing abrasives in cosmetic products - cause to New York waterways.
According to the report, which was prepared by the Attorney General's Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB), "nineteen tons of microbeads are washed down the drain each year and many end up in New York's waters, where they remain for decades, acting as sponges for toxic chemical pollutants."
The tiny "toxic sponges" can then be eaten by fish and wildlife, spreading toxin contamination throughout entire food chains and threatening the New York ecosystem, the authors of the report write.
Alongside this release, nine additional officials and political figures joined Schneiderman to support the passing of the Attorney General's Microbead-Free Waters Act, which was first proposed earlier this year. This bill would make New York State the first in the nation to ban the sale of any-and-all products containing microbeads.
"New York has always been at the forefront of national progress when it comes to addressing the issue of plastic pollution," Schneiderman said in a prepared statement. "By passing the Microbead-Free Waters Act, we will show that New York remains a leader in protecting the health of our families and our environment."
The bill was unanimously passed by the Assembly on May 5 and is currently being considered in the Senate.
However, research has shown that microbeads are not just a New York problem. Similar battles are being fought in other parts of the United States and Europe as well. "Beat the Microbead" is an international campaign dedicated to eliminating the use of the plastic abrasives in cosmetics. According to the organization - which is supported by the United Nation Environmental Programme - approximately 11 percent of all environmental problems caused by marine debris can be directly linked to microbeads. Eliminating this threat could take a significant chunk out of the water pollution problem that some experts call "the plastic soup."
Encouragingly, at least 21 companies around the world have already expressed a commitment to "phasing out" microbeads in their products. Other companies have not acknowledged the threat of these beads, but none have taken pains to deny the claims of environmental experts, according to the EPB report.

Vancouver Aquarium aims to save hundreds of sea lions

The Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Research Team has been working to rescue an estimated 400 ensnared sea lions off of B.C.’s coasts, with the latest rescue having taken place on Thursday.
Dr. Martin Hualena, head veterinarian of the Vancouver Aquarium, has been leading the project to rescue these animals he said are trapped by garbage and marine debris off the province’s shores.
He went out in search of entangled sea lions on the east coast of Vancouver Island this past week and there he found one particularly bad case.
“We did find one California sea lion that was very entangled in fishing gear around his kind of mid-section that was cutting very, very deeply,” he said. “We recovered the animal in the water, which was very interesting, and disentangled the animal.”
He said this single incident is but one of 450 to 500 estimated cases of entangled animals happening around the province on any given day.
“The biggest issues for us is it’s very, very complicated to go ahead and disentangle these animals,” he said. “So many factors have to come into alignment.”
Haulena has worked with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup to help identify problem areas, as well as facilitate the education to communities explaining the impact of man-made debris on our wildlife.
He hopes this program will continue to expand and to reduce the damage done to these creatures.

Chicago runaway-train driver 'dozed'

The operator of a Chicago train which derailed on Monday, injuring 32 people, has said she fell asleep while on duty, according to federal officials.
The unnamed woman, employed as an operator for two months, reportedly admitted it was not the first time she had dozed off on the job.
The speeding metro train jumped its tracks at O'Hare International Airport and hurtled up an escalator.
None of the injuries at the busy airport were said to be serious.
"She did admit that she dozed off prior to entering the station," National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said during a news conference on Wednesday.
Mr Turpin said the woman often worked an erratic shift schedule.
She was reportedly disciplined in February after falling asleep on the job as her train partially missed a station.
The woman is said to be co-operating with investigators.

Planes, ships chase new leads in search for Malaysian jet

PERTH/KUALA LUMPUR - New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas on Wednesday also reported seeing potential wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean,Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.
Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.
But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.
"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.
Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.
"The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.
"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."
Wednesday's good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
"This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday, which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front," Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth.
Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.

PASSENGER RELATIVES DISTRAUGHT

An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-metre (66 ft) waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were also in the search zone.
Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
The so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.
Malaysia said on Tuesday that the U.S. "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.
At the Pentagon, the U.S. and British defence chiefs acknowledged the incident remained a mystery.
"On the terrorism question, I don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. I think we have to continue to search," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
"Unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for certain," British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.
FBI Director James Comey said at a Washington hearing on Wednesday he expected his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the flight in the next day or two. He did not say what results he expected.
The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".
Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese special envoy Zhang Yesui met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.

Landslide town knew risks, officials insist

The US town devastated by a monster mudslide that has claimed up to 24 lives so far was warned four years ago of the risk but residents felt safe anyway, officials said Wednesday.
As workers probed the disaster site for missing residents of Oso, Washington, the little town buried last weekend under a square mile of earth and timber, emergency preparedness officials defended their own performance.
A 2010 report commissioned after a major landslide in 2006 pinpointed the hillside overlooking Oso as among the most dangerous in terms of possible collapse.
But officials -- who believe Saturday's landslide may have been triggered by a small earthquake -- say the local community was aware of the dangers.
- 'Community did feel safe' -
Townspeople "knew the risk, but they felt safe in the small events," John Pennington, head of the Snohomish County Emergency Management Department, told reporters.
"This wasn't a small event. It was large, it was very catastrophic," he added, fighting back tears at one point.
Some 200 rescuers digging through the debris recovered two more bodies Tuesday and believe they located eight more, officials said.
On Wednesday, they said the official confirmed death toll remained at 16, as the other bodies found had not been extricated.
The number of reports of people unaccounted for remains at 176, although that could include double-counting and people who may turn up elsewhere, and so likely does not represent how many more fatalities may be found.
"I'm very confident that that number will drop in the end," Pennington said Wednesday.
- National Guard -
A total of 49 dwellings in the rural town were hit by the one square mile (2.5 square kilometer) wall of mud, rocks and trees, which also destroyed part of a highway some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.
Officials say the massive emergency operation is still aimed at rescuing survivors as well as recovering bodies, even though the chances of finding people alive diminish with each day.
The National Guard joined local and state emergency workers after President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Washington state.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will help "save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in Snohomish County," said the White House.
One volunteer firefighter described the landslide as "quicksand, where you could easily sink up to your armpits."
There were signs of structures peeking through a dense layer of fallen timber and earth, he said, adding that debris had blocked the Stillaguamish river, causing floods in the Darrington area.
- 'Increasingly unstable' -
"The rising river and floodwaters are making the slide areas nearest the banks increasingly unstable," the emergency worker, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP.
Some believe that a small 1.1 magnitude earthquake in the area may have triggered last Saturday's landslide. The quake was mentioned in one briefing earlier in the week.
Pennington said the focus now was on rescue and recovery -- but after the emergency operation is finished, officials want answers to prevent another tragedy.
"From 2006 to 2014 the community did feel safe. People knew that this was a landslide-prone area, (but)sometimes big events just happen," he said.
"This event happened, and I want to find out why, I want to understand the dyanmic of a potential small earthquake behind it that shook it loose, and I don't have those answers right now."

Flappy Bird to return, says creator

Addictive mobile game Flappy Birds will return to Apple's app store confirms creator Dong Nguyen, without giving a specific date
Addictive mobile game Flappy Bird will return to Apple's app store, creator Dong Nguyen has confirmed - although he declined to give a specific date.
On Twitter, a fan had asked if he was going to put the game back in the app store.
"Yes. But not soon," Mr Nguyen replied, later adding: "I don't work by plan. I will release it when it is done."
Mr Nguyen removed the popular game in February, saying its popularity had ruined his "simple life".

Ruined lives

Launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird was free to download and required players to tap the screen to keep the bird in flight.
Despite its simple graphics, Flappy Bird was a notoriously difficult game since many users could only keep the bird in the air for a few seconds before it hit an obstacle and fell.
The game went viral after being promoted almost entirely by social media users and was reviewed on a YouTube channel by more than 22 million subscribers.
It was downloaded 50 million times, and at the height of its popularity, Mr Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 (£30,450) a day from advertising
In an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone, Mr Nguyen said he was moved to remove the popular mobile game from the App store after users wrote to him detailing how the game had destroyed their lives.
After the game was taken down, users started several passionate petitions to get the game reinstated.