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There are no chopsticks on the table at Sammy's Kitchen in Hong Kong. And that is not the only way this restaurant stands out in a neighborhood clustered with Cantonese fare.
 
Sammy's trademark is a large three-dimensional billboard of a cow. It juts out over Queen's Road West in the Sheung Wan district, a neighborhood where the odor of dried squid mingles with the aroma of herbs from nearby traditional medicine shops.
 
An elderly, heavily inebriated Caucasian man, sitting across the street on the stoop of the Chun Sing stationery store, gazes incredulously at the imposing bovine while taking swigs from his large bottle of Skol beer.
 
More sober passersby also do a double-take, and curiosity compels some to explore what the billboard represents.
 
The unusual sign actually is an endangered species.
 
Sammy's Kitchen is primordial fusion both in decor and menu, which may give some diners pause.
 
A reviewer rates Sammy's reasonably priced meals as rather mediocre but praises the establishment for friendly and welcoming service. Frommer's Guidebook adds, "It's comforting to see a place that remains virtually unchanged over the decades in such a fast-changing environment.”
 
The restaurant's namesake, owner Sammy Yip, began cooking at the age of 12 and worked as a chef for the five-star Peninsula and Mandarin Oriental hotels.
 
He has adorned most of his tables with orange or violet-colored checkered tablecloths. That was an upscale touch when he opened the restaurant in 1970.
 
The corner booths are laminated tables, bare except for bottles of Del Monte ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar and recycled plastic containers of toothpicks.
 
One side of the establishment is decorated with faux brick. Tiny white lights have been strung across the top of the walls.
 
The voluminous bilingual menu runs the gamut from beefsteak through pastas to fried rice but mostly favors dishes that appeal to carnivores. Many are smothered in Sammy's secret sauce, which has won a loyal following over the decades. Fans include high-ranking government officials.
 
For a man who has been cooking for 70 years, Sammy Yip appears to have retained his enthusiasm for the culinary arts and what should accompany every restaurant meal – sincere hospitality.
 
Hong Kong authorities, however, have recently turned an inhospitable eye toward Sammy's landmark sign. The giant cow looming over Queen's Road West not only serves as a beacon for diners but also for residents, visitors and taxi drivers.
 
Anyone heading for the restaurant or anywhere close to it can simply tell a taxi driver:  "Take me to the cow!"
 
Thirty-four years after the illuminated animal first moved into position, the Hong Kong buildings department ruled the signboard was an illegal structure protruding into public space and ordered the Yip family to remove it.
 
The Yips' appeals have been unsuccessful, as have customers' hopes the sign can be declared a vintage Hong Kong landmark.
 
“The cow will be removed. ... We must remove it,” says catering manager Iry Yip Fung-yee, Sammy's daughter. “We're just a small business,” she laments, explaining why the Yips are not going to launch a potentially costly legal fight to save Hong Kong's most famous cow.


Obama visits Oklahoma
and promises federal aid


President Obama traveled Sunday to Moore, Oklahoma, to meet with and console residents of the midwestern town devastated by a tornado that killed 24 people and injured more than 200 others.  The president has pledged $3.4 million in federal aid to help the town rebuild.

“This is a strong community, with strong character.  There is no doubt they are going to bounce back, but they need help. Just like any of us would need help if we saw the kind of devastation that we are seeing here," he said.

Elsewhere investigators are looking into the cause of two major transportation accidents in the United States, the collapse of a major road bridge in Washington state and a freight train collision in rural Missouri that caused the collapse of a highway overpass.  Robert Sumwalt is a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Anytime we have something like that, we are very concerned about it.  That is why we are here.  We are here to find out what happened so we can learn from it and keep it from happening again," he said.

The Federal Highway Administration says about a quarter of the country’s 607,000 bridges are structurally deficient.

And while Congress is not in session this week, calls for investigations into the Internal Revenue Service after learning it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, and into the Justice Department’s decision to search the emails of journalists working on stories about national security, continue to dominate the news in Washington.


London hacking suspect
was held in Kenya in 2010


Kenyan officials say a suspect in last week's savage murder of a British soldier in London was arrested in 2010 near the East African country's border with Somalia.

Michael Adebolajo and five others were detained and questioned by Kenyan authorities in the port city of Mombasa over links to the al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab.

Adebolajo was believed to have been preparing to train and fight with al-Shabab, but was released after two days due to lack of evidence.

Kenya's government spokesman said he was arrested under the fake name he was using at the time, Michael Olemendis Ndemolajo, and handed to British authorities.

British soldier Lee Rigby, who had served a tour of duty in Afghanistan, was killed in broad daylight last week near the Royal Artillery Barracks in southeast London. Video footage shows Adebolajo wielding a bloodied knife and meat cleaver, shouting threats and "God is Great" in Arabic.

Saturday, British police arrested three men in their 20s in connection with the murder, two of them at a residential address in southeast London and one on a London street. All three were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.

Also Saturday, thousands in northern British city of Newcastle protested Rigby's murder and demanded more government efforts to monitor radicals and extremists in the country.

The two suspects in the stabbing, Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, remain under guard in a hospital after being shot by police during their apprehension.

Both suspects are believed to have converted to Islam after being brought up Christian by their African immigrant families. The two men told bystanders they were acting in retaliation against British forces killing Muslims. Neither one has been charged.

Another young man was arrested Friday on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. News reports identify him as Abu Nusaybah, a friend of Michael Adebolajo.

In an interview with the BBC hours before his arrest, Nusaybah said Adebolajo had been approached by Britain's security service months ago to work as an informant, which he refused. Nusaybah said Adebolajo had changed after a visit to Kenya.


Killer robots draw concern
for fear of being independent


United Nations’ special rapporteur on executions has joined calls for a moratorium on so-called killer robots, automated weapons systems which critics fear may one day operate independently from human commanders. It may sound like something from a sci-fi movie, but campaigners say the threat is real and the robots already exist.

A human-sized robot joined campaigners outside the British Parliament last month to highlight what they say are the imminent dangers of automated weapons systems or killer robots.

Among them was American Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in the campaign to ban land mines.

"There has to be discussion about technology that will totally transform war. And when my country wants to call it a bloodless battlefield I feel enraged," said Ms. Williams.

Unmanned combat air vehicles, or drones, have been a part of warfare for several years and form a key part of the United States’ battle against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The X-47B drone, currently undergoing flight testing, is one of the world’s most advanced, able to take off from an aircraft carrier. Many countries operate drone programs.

Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics, and chairman of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, says drones mark the final step in the industrial revolution of war.

“Now the big question is, ‘who is looking at the targets, who is deciding when to fire it?’ We’re only concerned with the kill function being autonomous. So we need proper human supervision to select the targets and engage them," said Sharkey.

Sharkey says currently all drones operate under human supervision.

But supporters argue that technology like drones can eliminate human fallacy from the battlefield.

Professor Christopher Coker of the London School of Economics is author of "Warrior Geeks: How 21st Century Technology is Changing the Way We Fight and Think about War."

“One argument is they have greater oversight than anyone’s ever had before. They are actually watching the target for hours at a time sometimes, days at a time, so there’s a certain behavioral profile and on that basis they take the decision on whether to strike or not. But that gives you no greater insight into the character that you’re actually dealing with, and, of course, there is collateral damage as well," said Coker.

The soundtrack to a promotional video from South Korean industrial giant Samsung Techwin for its SGR-A1 sentry robot, which aims to replace border or security guards with intelligent surveillance cameras.

It is armed with a 5.5-mm. machine gun but still controlled by human operators. The campaign group Human Rights Watch says it fears the human element could one day easily be removed.

Again, professor of robotics Noel Sharkey.

“The thing about an autonomous robot is you couldn’t hold it accountable. It’s not a moral agent. So who do you hold accountable? Well the problem is that you’re probably going to talk about having the commander being accountable. But that really wouldn’t be fair because there are so many things that can go wrong within a robot," he said.

Campaigners say there is huge interest from industrial corporations in developing so-called killer robots.

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on executions has joined calls for a moratorium on their deployment.

The issue is due to be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Wednesday.


Intelligence found linked
to filter for useless information


New research indicates there is a strong link between the brain’s ability to ignore useless information and intelligence.

Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York state say they can predict a person’s intelligence quotient, or IQ, using some simple visual tests.

Test subjects were asked to watch brief video clips of black and white bars moving across a computer screen within three different sized circles. They were asked to identify in which direction the bars drifted.

The exercise measures the brain's unconscious ability to filter out visually distracting background motions. The study, researchers said, shows that individuals whose brains are better at automatically suppressing background motion perform better on standard measures of intelligence such as a written IQ test, which subjects were also given.

According to the study, subjects with higher IQ scores were able to perceive the direction of movement when observing the smallest image. The findings support previous research that people with higher IQs are able to make perceptual judgments more quickly and have faster reflexes.

However, the higher a person's IQ, the slower they were at detecting movement when presented with the larger images.

"From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse," says Michael Melnick, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

The key discovery, researchers said, is how closely this natural filtering ability is linked to a person’s IQ score.

Researchers say there was a 64 percent correlation between motion or distraction suppression and IQ scores. Other research exploring the relationship between intelligence and color discrimination, sensitivity to pitch and reaction times only have shown a 20 to 40 percent correlation, scientists said.

"In our first experiment, the effect for motion was so strong," said Duje Tadin, a senior author on the study and an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. "I really thought this was a fluke."

The test represents the first non-verbal and culturally unbiased way to assess IQ, researchers said.

"Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can't really track it back to one part of the brain," said Tadin. "But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent."

According to the study, the relationship between IQ and motion suppression points to the fundamental cognitive processes that underlie intelligence. The brain’s ability to filter important information from the bombardment of sensory information is an indication of the brain’s efficiency and therefore intelligence.

"Rapid processing is of little utility unless it is restricted to the most relevant information," the authors conclude.

"We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion. This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what's different about the neurochemistry, what's different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs," says Tadin.

The unexpected link between IQ and motion filtering was reported online in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 23.


Brazilian jet manufacturer
basking in flood of sales


Embraer SA, the world's third-largest commercial jet maker, expects just one more big regional jet order as a result of its current U.S. sales campaign, Chief Executive Officer Frederico Curado said in an interview, after the Brazilian plane maker clinched three of four major deals since December.
 
“After the American Airlines competition, the game is over for a while,” Curado told the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit late Thursday, reinforcing views that Embraer has come away victorious in the latest round against Canadian rival Bombardier, Inc.
 
Curado said much of the lingering demand for regional jets over the next year or so, which could amount to between 150-250 planes seating up to 76 passengers, is likely to be satisfied by outstanding options in recent contracts.
 
Embraer booked the lion's share of those contracts over the past six months, with 117 firm orders from United Airlines and regional operators SkyWest Inc and Republic Airways, plus options for an additional 247 jets.
 
Bombardier's only major U.S. contract in the same period was a December deal with Delta Air Lines for 40 firm orders and 30 options.
 
Embraer's flurry of new orders this year, worth at least $4.8 billion at list prices, guaranteed stable or growing output of its regional E-Jets in coming years, Curado said, in his first interview since a milestone Tuesday order from SkyWest.
 
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts estimate that Embraer's order backlog may rise from a six-year low last year to 16.1 billion Brazilian reales ($78.58 billion) by June, its highest since 2009.
 
While U.S. demand has concentrated on the smaller E175, due to renegotiated labor contracts for regional airlines, Curado said there is ongoing sales activity for larger models in the E-Jet lineup, despite a slowdown in their traditional markets.
 
“Europe is facing a tricky economic outlook and the Chinese market for regional aviation has been settling. So at this point we're talking about smaller volumes, but the E190 is the most-sold of the E-Jet family and that should continue,” he said.
 
Embraer's backlog should continue to grow next year, according to analysts at Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, pointing to the outlook for smaller orders from emerging markets and continued demand in North America.
 
Curado said he expected most demand for jets of around 100 seats to come from fleet renewals over the coming decade, rather than market growth. He mentioned hundreds of aging Fokker 100, McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 737-200/300 that will need to be replaced.
 
While that represents a small slice of airlines' global fleets, Curado said it will remain Embraer's core business, justifying a hefty investment to renew the E-Jet lineup with more fuel-efficient engines, wings and other systems by 2018.
 
Engineers have been working two years on the specifications of the next generation of planes, Curado said, but the program is still awaiting approval by Embraer's board of directors.
 
Many analysts expect the formal launch of the next generation next  month at the Paris Air Show, which Curado neither confirmed nor denied.
 
If Embraer does go ahead with the program, Curado said it could cover development costs using cash flow and debt, with no need to raise new capital.


Colombia and rebels OK
one aspect of agreement


The government of Colombia and the country's largest rebel group have agreed on land reform, after more than six months of peace talks.

Their deal calls for the economic and social development of rural areas and providing land to poor farmers.

Land reform is one of the most contentious issues in the talks on ending five decades of conflict.

This step is the first major advance in six months of peace talks taking place in Cuba.

A joint statement warns that the agreement is "conditioned on reaching an agreement on the totality of the agenda," because the talks are based on the principle that "nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon."

The Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia has been fighting the Colombian government since the 1960s. It is the longest-running insurgency in Latin America.


Judge raps Sheriff Joe
on claims of profiling


A U.S. federal judge has ruled that an Arizona sheriff known for his tough policies has been singling out Latinos in immigration patrols and traffic stops.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow ruled Friday in Phoenix that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his officers unfairly targeted Latino drivers when pulling people over for traffic stops and identity checks.

A controversial Arizona law allows law enforcement officers to randomly stop people and check their immigration status.

Snow said Arpaio was using racial profiling to make law enforcement decisions. He said the evidence demonstrates that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office specifically equated being a Hispanic or Mexican day laborer, as opposed to a Caucasian or African American, with being an unauthorized alien.

The ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought last year by a group of Latino drivers who accused Arpaio's officers of using race to decide which motorists to stop. The lawsuit sought no damages, just corrective action.

The American Civil Liberties Union has praised the ruling. Latino civil rights organizations also praised the ruling and said they looked forward to seeing reforms implemented in the sheriff's office. Arpaio, who won re-election in November, has not commented but is expected to appeal.

Arizona lies on the U.S. border with Mexico and is often at the center of discussions on immigration policy.

U.S. Geological Survey/Brandon Wilson