0305-Line Expands Mobile Payment Service

Screenshot of Line’s payment system, called Line Pay.

 

Line

Line, which operates Japan’s most popular smartphone messaging app, is moving quickly to expand Line Pay, a mobile-payment system it launched in December.

The Japanese unit of Korean Internet giant Naver said Tuesday it has signed an agreement with CyberSource, a U.S.-based global e-commerce payment company owned by Visa, to work together as strategic partners.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Line said the alliance with CyberSource, whose payment management and security services are used by over 400,000 businesses worldwide, is aimed at accelerating Line Pay’s growth outside Japan, but declined to share details of their planned cooperation.

Line Pay’s success is far from guaranteed, especially outside Japan. Just about all of the major players in mobile technology and services, from Google and Apple to Samsung Electronics, are trying to gain control over payments.

While Apple has been promoting its Apple Pay, Samsung bought mobile-payments company LoopPay last month and just unveiled a smartphone payment system calledSamsung Pay this week. In China, the world’s largest smartphone market, local Internet giants Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings both run their own mobile payment systems, which are used by hundreds of millions of consumers for online shopping, taxi-hailing and various other purposes.

Line’s mobile messaging service has over 181 million active users globally, and is popular in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. Line Pay represents the next big challenge for the company. In January, Line also launched a taxi-hailing service in Japan called Line Taxi, which lets passengers pay for their rides using Line Pay.

Payments within Line’s messaging app, such as the purchases of stickers – emoticons featuring cartoon characters that people can send to one another – can be handled by Line Pay. But Line wants to expand Line Pay far beyond the messaging app.

Earlier this week, Line said several online-shopping sites in Japan, including a marketplace called Zozotown and music store HMV Online, will start accepting Line Pay.

0304-[Newsmaker] Samsung mobile chief returns with new Galaxy

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150303001007

0303 - Keeping cold could keep you thinner

Scientists at the University of California discovered that staying in the cold could help us lose weight. Exposure to the cold increases levels of a protein that helps make brown fat, which burns energy and keeps us warm. It also helps us lose weight. White fat stores excess energy and so we gain weight. The researchers said that because of air conditioning and heating, we stay warm. This means our body does not need so much brown fat. They said that workers who work outside in cold temperatures, "have a significant amount of brown fat when compared to same-aged indoor workers".

The research was on two different groups of mice. One group was injected with the brown-fat protein. This group gained 30 per cent less weight after both groups had high-fat diets. The researchers say this could help in the fight against obesity. Obese people have lower levels of brown fat than thinner people. Head researcher Hei Sook Sul said: "This protein could become an important target for research into the treatment and prevention of obesity." She said that increasing the levels of this protein could lead to weight loss even if people eat the same amount of food.

0302 - Record number of flowers bloom

 Scientists are amazed at how many flowers there are in the U.K. this winter. In normal years, between 20 and 30 types of flowers and plants are open. On New Year's Day, scientists found 368 different flowers in bloom. Some are five months early. Scientists say this record number is because of climate change. Last year was the warmest year ever in Britain. A scientist told the BBC he was surprised at the number of flowers. He said: "Fifty years ago, people looking for plants in flower at the start of the year found 20 species. This year the total has amazed us."

The scientist said warmer weather and mild winters were changing when flowers open. He said: "We are now in our fourth mild winter….We thought that the snow and hard frosts before Christmas would have finished most flowering…but it seems not to be the case." The most common flowers to open were daisies and dandelions. Britain's weather agency described the change in climate for last year. It said: "All months except August were warmer than average, and this was the warmest year on record for the UK. It was also wetter than average for many locations."

0211 - Unemployed young people very stressed

 A new survey from Britain shows that a third of young, unemployed people regularly "fall apart" emotionally. They are so stressed or unhappy that they cannot control their emotions, so they have problems living a "normal" life. The survey is from a youth charity called the Prince's Trust. Its researchers asked questions to 2,200 people who did not have a job. Almost half of them said they often felt anxious about everyday situations, and that they tried not to meet new people. One in eight of those surveyed said they were too stressed to leave the house. The charity said: "Thousands of young people feel like prisoners in their own homes. Without the right support, these young people become socially isolated."

Many of these young people struggle with day-to-day life, which means they find it more and more difficult to find a job. Britain's Employment Minister Esther McVey said: "Our young people are some of the best and most talented in the world." She said it was important to try and match these people with the right jobs. Researcher David Fass added: "Young people are our future and it is important that we invest in them and provide them with the tools they need to reach their full potential." Jack, 25, explained how hard it was for him to be unemployed. He said: "I would wake up and wouldn't want to leave the house. I stopped speaking to my friends and I had absolutely no confidence speaking to people."

0210 - University students take 'impossible' exam

Final-year students at a university in England are angry after they took an economics exam. Students from the University of Sheffield have signed a petition to say the exam questions were 'impossible' to answer. Nearly all of the 100 students who took the exam complained and signed the online petition. They want the university to look into this. The students say the exam contained questions on topics that were not in their course. They also say the questions included a lot of difficult maths that they had not been taught. One student said a lecturer told them they would only need 'simple' maths. They are now worried that they will get low test scores, and that this will affect what kind of degree they get.

The head of the economics department, professor Andy Dickerson, told the BBC that the exam was fair. He said not all the questions needed maths. He said the level of maths in the exams was the same as the level taught to students on the course. Professor Dickerson also said all the exam questions were on topics the students had studied. He said: "All questions were based on topics taught in the course and for which further reading was provided." He added that one question in the exam used a term that students may not have seen before. He said this was no problem because the question explained the meaning of the term. The university said it would look carefully at the results.

0209 - Britain says yes to 3-parent babies

Lawmakers in the U.K. have voted to allow doctors to create babies from the DNA of three different people. It will be the first country in the world to do this. There was a vote in Britain's parliament, where 382 lawmakers voted for allowing three-person babies and 128 voted against the idea. The idea behind three-person babies is to stop diseases being passed from a mother to her newborn baby. Doctors say that as many as 150 babies a year could be born using the new technique. The first baby to be born using the DNA from three people could be as early as next year. The technique will help families with mitochondrial diseases. These are incurable and affect about one in 6,500 children worldwide.

The technique is quite simple. It combines the DNA of the two parents with the DNA of another woman. Doctors replace the unhealthy, disease-carrying DNA in the mother's egg with healthy DNA from the donor. The result is that the baby receives about 0.1 per cent of its DNA from the donor woman. Lawmakers said the technique was "light at the end of a dark tunnel" for many families. Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said: "We're not playing God here. We're just making sure that two parents who want a healthy baby can have one." Critics say the technique could be dangerous. They say it would open the door to the genetic modification of children and "designer babies" in the future.