World

The EU parliament on Tuesday passed a new law requiring USB-C to be the single charger standard for all new smartphones, tablets and cameras from late 2024.

The measure, which EU lawmakers adopted with a vote 602 in favour, 13 against, will — in Europe at least — push Apple to drop its outdated Lightning port on its iPhones for the USB-C one already used by many of its competitors.

Makers of laptops will have extra time, from early 2026, to also follow suit.

EU policymakers say the single charger rule will simplify the life of Europeans, reduce the mountain of obsolete chargers and reduce costs for consumers. 

It is expected to save at least 200 million euros ($195 million) per year and cut more than a thousand tonnes of EU electronic waste every year, the bloc’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said.

The EU move is expected to ripple around the world.

The European Union’s 27 countries are home to 450 million people who count among the world’s wealthiest consumers. Regulatory changes in the bloc often set global industry norms in what is known as the Brussels Effect.

“Today is a great day for consumers, a great day  for our environment,” Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba, the European Parliament’s pointman on the issue, said.

“After more than a decade; the single charger for multiple electronic devices will finally become a reality for Europe and hopefully we can also inspire the rest of the world,” he said.

– Faster data speed –

Apple, the world’s second-biggest seller of smartphones after Samsung, already uses USB-C charging ports on its iPads and laptops. 

But it resisted EU legislation to force a change away from its Lightning ports on its iPhones, saying that was disproportionate and would stifle innovation.

However some users of its latest flagship iPhone models — which can capture extremely high-resolution photos and videos in massive data files — complain that the Lightning cable transfers data at only a bare fraction of the speed USB-C does.

The EU law will in two years’ time apply to all handheld mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, portable speakers, handheld videogame consoles, e-readers, earbuds, keyboards, mice and portable navigation systems.

People buying a device will have the choice of getting one with or without a USB-C charger, to take advantage of the fact they might already have at least one cable at home.

Makers of electronic consumer items in Europe agreed a single charging norm from dozens on the market a decade ago under a voluntary agreement with the European Commission.

But Apple refused to abide by it, and other manufacturers kept their alternative cables going, meaning there are still some six types knocking around.

They include old-style USB-A, mini-USB and USB-micro, creating a jumble of cables for consumers.

USB-C ports can charge at up to 100 Watts, transfer data up to 40 gigabits per second, and can serve to hook up to external displays.

Apple also offers wireless charging for its latest iPhones — and there is speculation it might do away with charging ports for cables entirely in future models. But currently the wireless charging option offers lower power and data transfer speeds than USB-C.

At least 130 million people in Bangladesh were left without power on Tuesday after a grid failure caused widespread blackouts, the government’s power utility company said. 

Bangladesh has suffered a major power crisis in recent months as a result of higher global energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has imposed regular cuts to conserve electricity.

But it remained unclear what caused Tuesday’s unscheduled blackout, which hit more than 80 percent of the country shortly after 2:00 pm (0800 GMT), according to the Power Development Board.

Apart from some locations in Bangladesh’s northwest, “the rest of the country is without power”, spokesman Shamim Ahsan told AFP. 

The normally brightly lit streets of central Dhaka and other cities were dark on Tuesday evening.

Ahsan said 130 million people or more were without electricity and it remained unclear what had caused the fault.

“It is still under investigation,” he said, adding that a technical malfunction was the probable cause. 

Another official said later that only 60 percent of the poor country, which is home to factories supplying garments for Western brands, had been affected.

Since then half of those affected had had their power restored by the evening, A.B.M Badruddoza, spokesman of the state-run power grid company, told AFP.

Junior technology minister Zunaid Palak said on Facebook that power would be restored by 8:00 pm in the capital Dhaka, a megacity home to more than 22 million people.

– Energy crisis –

Prices of energy as well as food as other staples have soared worldwide in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, including in Asia. 

This has wrought havoc on Bangladesh’s electricity grid in recent months, with utilities struggling to source enough diesel and gas to meet demand.

A depreciating currency and dwindling foreign exchange reserves left Bangladesh unable to import sufficient fossil fuels, forcing it to close diesel plants and leave some gas-fired power stations idle.

The government imposed lengthy power cuts to conserve existing stocks in July, with outages lasting up to 13 hours a day at their peak. 

Tens of thousands of mosques around the Muslim-majority South Asian country have been asked to curtail the use of air conditioners to ease pressure on the electricity grid.

The blackouts sparked widespread public anger and helped mobilise large demonstrations on the streets of Dhaka.

At least three protesters were killed by security forces during the rallies, partly motivated by rising cost-of-living pressures.

Around 100 others were injured during a police crackdown on one demonstration, according to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. 

Consumer inflation has hit household budgets hard and the government recently pledged to cap the price of several staple foods, including rice, to quell public discontent. 

Bangladesh last witnessed a major unscheduled blackout in November 2014, when around 70 percent of the country went without power for nearly 10 hours.

Loretta Lynn, America’s groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into women’s experiences with sex, infidelity and pregnancy touched the nerve of a nation, has died. She was 90 years old.

She “passed peacefully in her sleep” at her ranch in Tennessee Tuesday morning, her family said in a statement sent to AFP.

Lynn saw a number of her edgy tracks banned by country music stations, but over the course of more than six decades in the business, she became a standard-bearer of the genre and its most decorated female artist ever.

Born Loretta Webb on April 14, 1932 in small-town Kentucky, Lynn was the eldest daughter in an impoverished family of eight kids, a childhood she immortalized in her iconic track “Coal Miner’s Daughter” — a staple on lists of all-time best songs.

“Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter / In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler,” Lynn sang in the hit recorded in 1970 — later the theme song for a 1980 movie about her life starring Sissy Spacek, who won an Oscar for the role. 

“We were poor but we had love / That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of. He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar.”

At just 15 years old, the artist married Oliver Vanetta Lynn, who she remained married to for nearly 50 years until his death in 1996.

They moved to a logging community in Washington state, and Lynn gave birth to four children before the age of 20, adding twins to the family not long after.

An admirer of his wife’s voice, her husband bought Lynn a guitar in the early 1950s.

It would be a fateful gift.

The self-taught musician penned lyrics inspired by her own early experiences as a married woman and her oft-tumultuous relationship, the nascent days of a prolific career that would see the artist release dozens of albums.

She started her own band, Loretta and the Trailblazers, and began playing bar sets before cutting her first record — “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” in 1960.

Her twang was warm and languid but Lynn’s lyrics were anything but: She sang with searing precision of marriage’s growing pains and gave voice to issues facing women that had long been kept quiet.

“Most songwriters tended to write about falling in love, breaking up and being alone, things like that,” Lynn told The Wall Street Journal in 2016. “The female view I wrote about was new.”

“I just wrote about what I knew, and what I knew usually involved something that somebody did to me.”

– ‘The Pill’ –

The Lynns began touring nationwide to promote the singer’s work to radio stations, and she made her debut at the storied Grand Ole Opry in 1960, going on to become one of the Nashville institution’s most acclaimed acts.

During her early years in the industry, she found a friend and mentor in Patsy Cline, one of the 20th century’s most influential singers who died in a plane crash in 1963 at age 30.

She also formed a longstanding creative partnership with Conway Twitty, with the pair becoming one of country’s classic duet acts. 

Lynn released hit single after hit single, including 1966’s “Dear Uncle Sam” — one of the era’s first tracks to document the tragedy of the Vietnam War.

Also in 1966, she put out “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” which went straight to the top of the charts and made her the first woman in country to pen a number one hit.

In 1969, she released one of her most controversial songs, “Wings Upon Your Horns,” which describes through religious metaphor a teenager losing her virginity.

But her runaway success continued and she dominated the 1970s with hits such as “Fist City” — a stern warning to her cheating husband’s lover — and 1972’s “Rated X,” which triggered an outcry in discussing the stigmas faced by divorced women.

In 1975, she released “The Pill,” which praised the freedoms of birth control. 

“This incubator is overused / Because you’ve kept it filled / The feelin’ good comes easy now / Since I’ve got the pill,” Lynn sang.

“When I’d put out a record, they’d say, ‘Uh oh, another dirty song.’ ‘Rated X’? They thought that was going to be bad. But hey, it sold. ‘One’s on the Way’? They thought that song would really be dirty,” she told Billboard in 2015. 

“But everything I sang about was everyday living.”

– ‘The truth’ –

In 1988, Lynn was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as one of its most storied legends.

She won virtually every arts honor available, including the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, given to her by Barack Obama in 2013.

Despite the progressive airs of her music, Lynn would insist that her clearly political music had “no politics.” She leaned Republican most of her life, frequently performing for and supporting right-wing candidates — including Donald Trump in 2016 — even as she also voiced support for Democrats like Jimmy Carter.

But she was universally beloved in the industry she deeply influenced, collaborating with scores of artists including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. In 2004 she released the album “Van Lear Rose,” produced by Jack White.

In 2021, a month before turning 89, she released the album “Still Woman Enough,” which featured re-recordings and new material.

“As long as I’m on this earth, I will try to be on top — somewhere,” she once told Billboard, explaining that she’d never retire from music.

“When they lay me down six feet under, they can say, ‘Loretta’s quit singing.’ I’ll have on one of my gowns,” she continued.

“That’s morbid, but it’s the truth.”

This year’s physics Nobel prize was awarded Tuesday to three men for their work on a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, which is so bizarre and unlikely that Albert Einstein was sceptical, famously calling it “spooky”.

So how exactly does it work?

Even people with degrees in physics struggle to understand it — and some who do still find parts “hard to swallow,” said Chris Phillips, a physicist at Imperial College London.

To explain the phenomenon he used the example of a photon — “a single unit of light” — though the theory is believed to hold true for other particles.

If a photon is put through a “special crystal”, it can be split into separate photons, he told AFP.

“They’re different colours from the one you started with,” Phillips said, “but because they started from one photon, they are entangled”.

This is where it gets weird. If you measure one photon it instantly affects the other — no matter how far you separate them.

This is not supposed to happen. Einstein’s theory of relativity says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

And they are inextricably bound together. When you observe the first photon, there are even odds that it will show itself as “either up or down”, Phillips said. But if it is up, then its twin is instantly forced down, or vice versa. 

– New way to kill Schroedinger’s cat –

He extended the famous quantum thought experiment of Schroedinger’s cat, in which a hypothetical animal locked inside a box with a flask of poison remains simultaneously alive and dead — until the moment the box is opened.

For quantum entanglement, if you have two cats in two boxes, by opening one you would “kill that cat and instantaneously — on the other side of the universe — the other cat has been killed,” Phillips said.

Phillips has seen this “extremely strange thing” first hand in his laboratory, where he has two beams of photons set up.

“I can put my hand in one beam and something happens to the other beam on the other side of the room instantaneously — I see a needle flick,” he said.

“That would still be true if my laboratory was millions of miles across.”

It was the fact that this occurs instantly that bothered Einstein, who dismissed this element of quantum entanglement — called non-locality — as “spooky action at a distance” in 1935.

He instead believed that “hidden variables” must somehow be behind what was happening.

In 1964, influential physicist John Stewart Bell found a way to measure whether there were in fact hidden variables inside quantum particles.

Two decades later, French physicist Alain Aspect, who won the Nobel on Tuesday, and his team were among the first able to test Bell’s theory in a laboratory.

By testing its limits, they found that “quantum mechanics resists all possible attacks,” Aspect said in an interview published by the Nobel Foundation after his win on Tuesday.

– ‘Totally crazy’ –

In doing so, Aspect proved Einstein wrong. But he was magnanimous to history’s greatest physicist.

“I like to say that Einstein’s owes a great, great merit in raising the question,” Aspect said, adding that “non-locality does not allow you to send a useful message faster than light”.

Even Aspect finds it weird to have accepted the idea of something “totally crazy” like non-locality into “my mental images,” he said.

The other physics Nobel winners, Austria’s Anton Zeilinger and John Clauser of the US, also tested Bell’s theory, ruling out loopholes and helping pave the way for what has been called the “second quantum revolution”.

Discoveries by Zeilinger, dubbed the “quantum pope”, have shown the potential for quantum entanglement to be used in encryption, quantum teleportation and more. 

Phillips from Imperial College London has developed a prototype the size of a hi-fi sound system that uses quantum entanglement to diagnose breast cancer.

But perhaps the greatest mystery about quantum entanglement remains one that puzzled Einstein nearly a century ago: why does it occur?

“We have to be humble in the face of physics,” Phillips said, adding that it was the same as any another aspect of nature.

“It just is.”