Mega Route

Photo credits: Photographer: Chung Sung-Jun/Pool via Bloomberg  Jay Y. Lee is set to spend the next five years in prison, one of the harshest sentences handed to a South Korean chaebol executive, after a court convicted him of bribing his way to greater control of the Samsung empire his family founded. The trial, part of a bigger corruption scandal that brought down South Korea’s president, transfixed the nation as it shone a spotlight on the close ties between chaebol business groups and the political elite. Prosecutors had sought 12 years in prison for the 49-year-old billionaire, whose lawyer said he would appeal. Any sentence of more than 3 years can’t be suspended. The judgment reflects a greater willingness by South Korea to break the ties between the wealthy and those in power. In the past, a long list of business leaders, including Lee’s father, were convicted for corrupt behavior only to be let off easy. The younger Lee is unlikely to enjoy such leniency. The Samsung ...

Photo credits: AFP Photo credits: REUTERS  A massive rockslide in Switzerland's Val Bondasca was not a complete surprise. Many parts of Switzerland, two thirds of which is mountainous, are at risk of avalanches and landslides. Communities in the Alps have been protecting themselves against such natural hazards for years. Before Wednesday's landslide, sensors on the Piz Cenaglo, high above the Bondasca valley, had already shown that the rock mass was moving. That warning triggered the automatic closure of some sections of road. The village of Bondo had a narrow escape. The four million cubic metres (141m cubic feet) of mud and rock which thundered down the mountain ended up just centimetres from people's homes. That wasn't just luck. Bondo has a concrete barrier to protect it from the full force of a landslide, and the river bed in the Bondasca Valley has been widened in the hope of channelling landslides away from populated areas. But the size of Wednesday'...

PA  Two police officers have been injured while arresting a man armed with a knife outside Buckingham Palace. The officers were treated at the scene for minor arm injuries and were not taken to hospital, the Metropolitan Police said. The force said the man, who was stopped outside the royal grounds, has been arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and assault. It is too early to know whether it was terror related, police said. The BBC understands no members of the Royal Family were in Buckingham Palace during the incident. The Met would not comment on witness reports that a man was wrestled from a car by officers after appearing to drive his vehicle towards them. Kiana Williamson said: "They were trying to get the man out of the car, shouting, more police were arriving on to the scene and the man was fighting back." Another witness, Nicole Kyle, was walking home when she saw police head towards the palace. The 25-year-old said: "I was walking toward The Mall a...

Photo credits: GETTY IMAGES  A man has been shot dead after attacking two soldiers with a machete in the centre of Brussels. The attacker, aged 30, was injured in the street but later died in hospital. One of the soldiers suffered a wound to the face, the other has a hand injury. Photographs showed the street cordoned off with police and troops in the area. Soldiers have become a familiar sight on the streets of the Belgian capital since terror attacks which killed more than 30 people last year. Belgium's federal prosecutor's office said the attacker was "not known for terrorist activities" but said that he had shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest" in Arabic) during the assault. The attack on Friday is being treated as terrorist incident, the prosecutor's office said. Witness Ryan MacDonald‏ wrote on Twitter that he heard the sound of a gunshot before seeing a "heavy police presence outside". Another witness sai...

Photo credits: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP   Hundreds of thousands of people in Texas and Louisiana were urged Friday to flee the path of Hurricane Harvey as the Gulf Coast braced for the most dangerous storm to hit the US mainland in over a decade. Roaring towards land with winds whipping up to 110 miles (175 kilometers) an hour, the category two hurricane is predicted to smash into coastal Texas late Friday or early Saturday as a much more powerful category three storm, forecast to dump up to 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain. Harvey is on course to make landfall as the strongest storm since the devastating Katrina 12 years ago, triggering “catastrophic” floods in an area that processes some seven million barrels of oil a day — in what could prove a major new test for President Donald Trump’s administration. Several Texas counties ordered mandatory evacuation from coastal areas. Those residents not under mandatory orders were also urged to leave immediately, or bu...

Photo credits: GETTY IMAGES  DJ Koh, head of Samsung's mobile division, told CNBC News: "I am already working on it." The company already has a voice-controlled assistant called Bixby on some of its devices, which can send messages and set reminders. One analyst said Samsung would have to differentiate itself from competitors. Voice-controlled smart speakers are typically used to play music, set a timer, add items to a shopping list and control other internet-connected gadgets around the home. Amazon's Echo speaker can be used to buy products from the online retailer, while Google's Home speaker can retrieve search results in a conversational way, and play YouTube videos on a compatible television. Ranjit Atwal, a research director at Gartner, said,"Samsung will have to do something different,". "There is no point building your own IP (intellectual property) if it replicates what is out there already." Samsung already manufactures internet...

YouTube/h3h3 Productions  Videomakers Ethan and Hila Klein, who run the YouTube channel h3h3 Productions, have won a legal battle over copyright in online video. The pair were sued after making fun of a video by another film-maker, Matt Hosseinzadeh, in which he pursued a love interest using parkour. They had used clips of his film, which he claimed was copyright infringement. But a judge ruled the Kleins' video criticising his work was "fair use as a matter of law". Ethan and Hila Klein have an audience of more than 4 million subscribers on their YouTube channel. In February 2016, they posted a video in which they watched Mr Hosseinzadeh's parkour video and made fun of it. Their video included several clips of his original video, interspersed with their own commentary and jokes. Mr Hosseinzadeh - known online as Matt Hoss - said in his original complaint that the pair had reproduced "virtually all of the work" as "nothing more than a prop" in...