4 February 2015 Last updated at 08:45
Japanese bank introduces robot workers to deal with customers in branche
TransAsia crash: Twelve dead as plane crashes into Taiwan river
At least 12 people have died after a TransAsia Airways plane clipped a bridge and crashed into a river near the Taiwanese capital of Taipei.
Fifty-eight people were onboard the domestic flight. The fuselage is now half-submerged in the Keelung River and lying on its side.
Rescuers on boats have cut it open to gain access to people trapped inside.
Officials say 16 people have suffered injuries, with some taken to hospital. Thirty people remain unaccounted for.
Cindy Sui reports: ''Many of the people on board are still inside the aircraft''
The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the outlying Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen, CNA said.
Japanese bank introduces robot workers to deal with customers in branche
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is employing ‘Nao’, a multilingual 5.4-kg robot, who will begin work in a branch in April
Japan’s biggest bank is preparing to unveil robot employees with a human touch.
Nao, a 58-centimetre-tall humanoid developed by the French company Aldebaran Robotics – a subsidiary of the Japanese telecoms and internet giant SoftBank - will begin work on a trial basis at one or two branches of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group from April.
Depending on his performance, more robots could appear at other branches in the coming months.
Equipped with a camera on his forehead, Nao is programmed to speak 19 languages. He analyses customers’ emotions from their facial expressions and tone of voice, enabling him to greet customers and ask which services they need.
‘Not Bergen-Belsen again... They should leave small fry alone’
Hilde Michnia was a concentration camp guard. Her past is rearing its ugly head
Up six steps from the front door, Hilde Michnia’s brown apartment door is decorated with a garland of white polyester roses. A black strip, reading “20*C+M+B+15” in honour of the Three Wise Men announces this Hamburg apartment is the home of a Christian woman. The 20 and 15 represent the year; and C, M and B stand for Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar or, by some accounts, Christus mansionem benedicat (May Christ bless the house).
Michnia is on the phone when I arrive, an unremarkable call to a friend dominated by talks of aches and pains, this time in her back. Nothing unusual for an elderly woman, not even for a former SS concentration camp guard.
Now, days after her 93rd birthday, public prosecutors in Hamburg are investigating Michnia’s service at Bergen-Belsen and Gross-Rosen concentration camps, in particular her alleged involvement in a death march from the latter in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Saudi royalty allegedly aided al-Qaeda
Scott Shane
Washington: In highly unusual testimony inside the US federal supermax prison, a former operative for al-Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia's royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi embassy in Washington.
The al-Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been diagnosed as mentally ill but was found competent to stand trial on terrorism charges. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 and is held in the most secure prison in the federal system, in Florence, Colorado.
Last year, he wrote to Judge George Daniels , who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For Bedouin Arabs guarding Israel's borders, new challenge to loyalty
Bedouin trackers have played a crucial role in Israel’s military for decades. But land disputes are souring the community's ties to the state, and enlistment is down.
ZEELIM AND LAQIYA, ISRAEL — Night has just fallen over Israel’s Negev desert, and a bevy of Bedouin trackers are padding across the desert, following their enemy’s footsteps.
Suddenly they stop. They have lost the trail. Two men fan out over the low vegetation, swinging their flashlights through the fragrant night air until they find tiny clues of a footprint – a squished blade of grass here, an overturned stone there. Then the patrol moves on.
These men are not on a mission for their tribe. They’re soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), engaging in a semi-annual training exercise. They come from a long tradition of Bedouin trackers who have defended Israel against everything from Sinai drug smuggling to Hezbollah booby-traps. While Arabs are exempt from military service, thousands of Bedouin volunteer, often in the hope of securing good jobs. Some openly profess a deep sense of loyalty to the state.
By LORI HINNANT and PAUL SCHEMM
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — In Tunis, Ghaith stands furtively on a street corner, his face masked by a hoodie, his tense eyes scanning the crowd for any hint of Islamic State militants.
He chain-smokes as he describes the indiscriminate killing, the abuse of female recruits, the discomfort of a life where meals were little more than bread and cheese or oil. He recounts the knife held to his throat by fellow fighters who demanded he recite a particular Quranic verse on Islamic warfare to prove himself.
"It was totally different from what they said jihad would be like," said Ghaith, who asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of being killed. Ghaith eventually surrendered to Syrian soldiers.
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